Smart Store-Shopping using BLE Technology

Abstract

Shopping from stores in malls remain one of the most favored places of people. Customers can try and test products on the spot itself. On the other hand, the advancement in networking technologies, the increasing internet speed and powerful online tools have led to businesses going online which has led to wide emergence of E-commerce in the last decade. Every type of product is available online and due to the presence of vast online competition, the customer gets cheap and amazing offers for products. E-Commerce provides users with a detailed product catalog, online payment gateway, precise description of different products and user reviews. However, in online shopping, there is no guarantee of product quality and customers do not get the touch and the feel of the product. The proposed system attempts to provide a platform that uses the benefits of online shopping and adds it into existing features of traditional store shopping, thus provides a smarter shopping experience. In order to achieve this goal, the proposed system creates a smart shopping environment in physical shops using BLE Technology. As demonstrated by the implementation results, the users of the proposed solution are provided the details of products lying in the vicinity to the section of the store they are visiting. The details are provided on the android phones of the user using the proposed low-cost Beacons placed on different products in the physical stores.

Keywords: E-commerce, Traditional Shopping, Beacons, BLE Technology, Online Shopping