Abstract

Proximity marketing is considered as a tool of creating a personal relationship between a customer and a vendor at the time of in-store physical purchase through modern, personalized, timely and relevant communication. It eliminates the ever-deepening decline in purchases made in retail stores, increases customer satisfaction and helps to create a positive brand image. Last but not least, it contributes to gaining feedback and helps to meet the company’s marketing goals. Bluetooth low energy beacons, called BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy), are currently one of the most widely used proximity marketing technologies. Based on the literature review, it has been identified significant shortcomings in the area of proximity marketing not only on the Slovak market but as well in general context of marketing innovations and their implication in contemporary marketing practice. Therefore, there is a need to provide revision of traditional strategic concepts with emphasis on innovative approach contained in proximity marketing concept. Up to now, the theory has been limited mainly to state the general need of incorporation of proximity marketing into managerial practice across markets but there is still missing exact detection of specific tools of proximity marketing in the scope of consumer’s preferences. So, the aim of the paper is to propose recommendations for the practice of enterprises based on the survey of perception of proximity marketing activities by tools of Bluetooth technologies, with regard to the specifics of its implementation in the Slovak Republic. For this reason, a questionnaire survey of the perception of proximity marketing activities by consumers has been provided. The data used in the presented paper were obtained by our own survey carried out on the sample of 568 respondents (citizens of the Slovak Republic older than 15 years). We’ve statistically evaluated the given data by hypotheses verification provided by relevant statistical tests.Therefore, the important groundwork for making proposals and recommendations for business practice in the scope of implementing proximity marketing in the Slovak Republic has been created. We have found out that 1) respondents who have interest in proximity marketing show more positive buy-in response and 2) respondents who prefer to shop in the store before buying through the Internet based on a promised reward also have a higher level of loyalty. So, we can conclude that there is a great assumption that Bluetooth technology-based activities provided in the scope of proximity marketing will trigger in practice higher conversion rate in comparison with other theoretically recommended. To exploit this competitive advantage fully, there is a prior need to develop the relevant theory of proximity marketing with respect to consumer’s specifics in the perception of this marketing innovation. 

Keywords: Bluetooth, in-store, mobile phones, proximity marketing, Slovakia.

JEL Classification: M31, M37.

Cite as: Gajanova, L., Nadanyiova, M., Kliestikova, J. & Olah, J. (2019). The potential of using Bluetooth-based system as a part of proximity marketing in the Slovak Republic . Marketing and Management of Innovations, 2, 239-252. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2019.2-21

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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