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Google-powered 3-D loyalty app hits retail

July 7, 2014Written by Tom Ryan

Walgreens has partnered with its loyalty-app partner, Aisle411, to test Google's virtual indoor 3-D mapping technology, Project Tango. The combined technologies enable shoppers to search and navigate products in store aisles while receiving promotions and gaining loyalty points.

Since early June, Walgreens has tested an enhanced version of its branded app internally at four stores in Chicago, New York, Seattle and St. Louis.

Fully unveiled at the Google I/O Developer Conference on June 25, Google's Project Tango is used to create 3-D maps of indoor spaces with the ability to show a user's precise location and orientation within centimeters of accuracy. Special cameras inside each store captures two million data points per second.

Leveraging Aisle411's inventory searchable indoor maps, the app allows users to search out and navigate to specific products in a 3-D augmented reality experience inside the store. Users can also simultaneously receive personalized coupons, offers and rewards that "pop out" of the shelf along their in-store route, as well as collect loyalty rewards just for walking down aisles. Comparing the rewards experience to a video game, special offers on the shelf can also then be "clipped" to the loyalty card.

"We're now turning the utility into an immersive game-like experience inside the store," Aisle411 CEO Nathan Pettyjohn told Advertising Age.

Aisle411's in-store mapping technology — which are GPS-enabled but non-3-D — is already used at 12,500 stores including Walgreens, Home Depot and Shop 'n Save. The Project Tango technology will be piloted in multiple locations with other major retailers over the coming months.

According to a 2011 study by Forrester, 58 percent of consumers want to get in-store product information and 19 percent of consumers are already browsing their mobile devices while in-store.

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