Illuminating the Supermarket

Check out this innovation that lets the lights do the talking!

We love to highlight innovations IN the supermarket, and this one is pretty cool.  Next time you’re looking for discounts, what if the supermarket lights could guide you!  That’s the creative system that Phillips Lighting has just put in place!

Phillips recently announced the world’s first major install of its connected lighting system with LED-based indoor positioning for Carrefour, hypermarket in France. The supermarket has replaced its previous fluorescent lighting with about 1.5 miles of energy efficient Philips LED lighting. But this innovation is not just about illumination – the best part? The lighting system is used to transmit a location signal to a shopper’s smartphone, triggering an app that provides location-based services:

Gerben van der Lugt, Head of Indoor Positioning, Philips Lighting Well actually it’s a lighting system that not only provides light or illumination it also provides hyper accurate scanning system. And we do that by having each fixture send out a unique code with the light called visible light communication so the picture identifies itself with the phone. And the phone then, with that code can actually calculate the exact position, and there with the light system provides an indoor position functionality next to the lighting.

PHIL: For customers, there’s great appeal in something like this - shoppers can build a list from home and then when they get to the store the app will localize all the applicable promotions and direct the customer to them. Convenient and time saving innovations like this one naturally appeal to the time pressed and cost conscious customer. 

Gerben van der Lugt, Head of Indoor Positioning, Philips Lighting  We know that many retailers and supermarkets are looking for ways to improve the shopping experience to help their shoppers and want to offer what we call location based services. The ability to locate yourself on the shop floor so you know where you are, combined with the knowledge of where products are so you can find products quickly and get more personalized promotions based on your location, so the whole shopping experience becomes more efficient and more fun as well.  Our main focus today is on European retailers but we are also developing for the US and we plan to be ready to rollout in the US next year.