240 brands sign up to Powa’s plan to turn everything into a retail environment

Leveraging the power of the smartphone’s multiple network connections, audio, visual, location and accelerometer technology, Powa Technologies is hoping to reveolutionise retail in store and around publications, adverts, posters and more with the international launch of PowaTag.

With as many as 240 retailers worldwide already signed up – including Carrefour and Universal Music – the hybrid technology at the heart of the PowaTag concept allows consumers to walk up to an item, billboard, screen advert or retail display and purchase the promoted product with a touch of their smartphone screen.

But the technology isn’t limited to visual media, it works by utilising the visual, audio and other sensors now shipped as standard on smartphones so users can also buy straight from television and radio adverts, or PA announcements at events using the PowaTag app and a couple of swift, secure and convenient actions.

PowaTag also allows physical locations to be transformed into data-rich browsing environments by interacting with strategically placed low-energy Bluetooth beacons. Shoppers can receive messages containing, for example, special offers as they approach any PowaTag Beacon enabled location. In addition, stores will know a participating customer’s shopping habits and personal preferences are as soon as they walk through the door. Retailers gain unparalleled detail about the purchase including physical location and powerful analytics toolkits.

Speaking at the worldwide launch of PowaTag at New York’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, retail technology entrepreneur, ecommerce veteran and CEO of Powa Technologies Dan Wagner explained the vision behind his revolutionary technology.

“The combination of PowaTag beacon and PowaTag transact provides retailers, brands, charities and others with an integrated ability to manage the process from discovery through to transaction with unprecedented ease and reach,” he told M-Retailing. “The retail sector is being forced to respond to growing market pressures from customers wanting greater levels of control and freedom of access and choice on how they purchase goods. Retailers can no longer afford to think in terms of online verses offline – they must seriously rethink how they connect in-store and online strategies to provide the agility and innovation needed to enable customers to buy whenever and wherever they may be, when they are at that critical buying-decision moment.”

Wagner continued: “Our hybrid combination of technologies which include Bluetooth beacons, instant payment authentication and mobility enable retailers to have a richer engagement with their customers and understand their needs and cater for them in a more focused way. Consumers also benefit from having a vastly improved shopping experience.”

Wagner has long sought to bridge the chasm between the physical and digital in retail while PowaTag delivers on his vision it also provides unprecedented levels of data and documentation t the previously woolly world of press and broadcast advertising.

This is corroborated by Thierry Pelissier, Carrefour’s marketing VP, who tells us: “Powatag will help Carrefour to measure the ROI of all our marketing campaigns (TV, print, online), real time, and fulfill our customers expectations with more efficiency. Among its various capabilities, Powatag will allow Carrefour to provide its customers with a fluid shopping experience, to buy online or access to more product information”