A personalized,
frictionless shopping experience

Aswaaq not only wanted to increase brand loyalty, and offer better service in general, but really aimed to provide a more personalized and convenient experience for their customers. The answer to their needs was found in Philips Indoor positioning, an innovative system with a number of capabilities, all based on the shopper’s location.

Indoor positioning fit with the brand’s innovative philosophy and Philips Lighting was an easy choice, offering patented Visible Light communication (VLC) that enables reliable and hyper-accurate location-based services. Philips worked with Aisle411 on the visualization of the floorplan and routing and with AlphaData and ValueLabs, aswaaq’s app development partners. 

Imagine you are hosting a dinner party and need to do grocery shopping for a long list of items. Before even leaving for the store, you can open your aswaaq REACH app at home and scan an item, immediately adding it to your shopping list. Once in store, the app will guide you the way to all items on your shopping list. It enables you to complete your shopping efficiently and stress-free. If you’re struggling to find a certain item on your list, you may become frustrated and leave. According to recent studies, 16% of shoppers in this situation will leave the store and go elsewhere to purchase it. Indoor positioning solves this so that you can fully focus on the preparations for your dinner party.

With Indoor positioning from Philips Lighting at aswaaq, shoppers can simply open their app to receive optimal route guidance, be alerted of nearby discounts, and even receive recipe suggestions all based off of their shopping list and location, making shopping a more pleasant and easy experience.

But how can an app and light fixtures deliver this kind of real-time location? Each Philips luminaire in the store sends a unique code. This is called Visible Light Communication (VLC). The front-facing camera of a smartphone receives this code and the system’s software then identifies it, and pinpoints the exact location of the phone on the map of the store, making it location-aware.

While the shopper benefits are obvious, the advantages for aswaaq’s management are just as plentiful. With Indoor positioning, aswaaq can have numerous benefits including an increase in app usage, brand enhancement, and more turnover. Additionally, aswaaq is now able to capture real-time data, allowing analytics of shopper traffic and behavior, optimize operations, and accurately measure the impact of their marketing. 

Mr. Affan Al Khoori, aswaaq’s Deputy CEO, is optimistic that Indoor positioning will lead to many more successful advances for aswaaq. “At aswaaq, we have been working toward bringing something new to the market. We have done it and we are on our way to developing further.”

With an Indoor positioning system from Philips Lighting, aswaaq is paving the way for the future of retail environments, and is well on its way to becoming the most innovative and customer-satisfying retailer in Dubai.