2. What are Location Based Services?
■ “Location Based Services (LBS) are IT services for providing information that
has been created, compiled, selected, or filtered taking into consideration the
current locations of the users or those of other persons or mobile objects”
– Kupper A. (2005) Location-Based Services: Fundamentals and Operation
Wiley
■ “LBS are information services accessible with mobile devices through the mobile
network and utilizing the ability to make use of the location of the mobile device.”
– Steiniger S, Neun M and Edwardes A (2006) Foundations of Location
Based Services Lesson 1 CartouCHe1 - Lecture Notes on LBS, V. 1.0 2
3. What are Location Based Services?
■ IT Services
– What do they Consider?
■ Your interests ■ Your wallet!■ Your location
4. LBS - the story so far
■ Has been in existence since the mid 1960s
– Developed by the U.S. Military using satellite GPS
– They made the GPS technology freely available in 1980s
to spark innovation
– E.U. made a similar version called Galileo in early 2000s
■ Joint venture with the European Space Agency
■ Since then
– Vast increase in wireless technology
– 1G to 4G (5G being developed)
■ Huge improvement in the mobile device technology
– Smart phones
– Tablets
– Wearable technology
– Biotechnology next?
5. Types of LBS:
■ Location-tracking services
– Rely on the tracking of a persons location by other
parties
■ Mobile Service Providers
■ Additional feature of apps – Twitter, Facebook, Google
Plus
■ Main feature – Connect, Find My Friends, Trick or Tracker
3.0■ Location-aware Services
– Are based on the device’s own knowledge of its position
■ OS and app dependent
– Handling of data with positional reference and spatial
analysis functions
■ Where am I?
■ What is near by?
■ How can I go to?
8. Methods of locating devices
■ Maps & Navigation
– Cell ID (Cell-of-Origin)
– Global Positioning System
(GPS)
– A-GPS
– Wi-Fi
– Bluetooth
9. How are devices tracked?
■ Tracking Services
– Geographic Information
Systems (GIS)
– Global Positioning System
(GPS)
– Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID)
– Wireless Local Area Network
(WLAN)
10. How Location Based Services are
used?■ Information Services
– User Generated Content
– Citizen Media
– Control plane locating
– GSM Localization
– Geo-fencing
11. Applications in Location Based
Services■ Applications
– Social Networking
• E.g. ‘Checking-in’ ,‘Tagging’
– Context Advertising
• E.g. Foursquare, Yelp
– Push & Pull Services
• E.g. Hailo, Uber etc.
13. Device providers
Technologies used in mobile devices include:
GPS
International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI)
International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI)
Unique Device Identifier (UDID)
Identifier for Advertisers (IFA).
15. Users
Customers and Businesses
As a Business we want to be able
to:
Provide Real-time information
Consumers Share Experiences
Publicize Business Location
Offer Customer Rewards
Monitor Customer Comments
As a Customer we want to:
Be alerted of local deals
Receive discounts and coupons
Locate local businesses /
Services
Track our children
Find places of interest
Which brings us to WHY ?
16. Why are LBS increasing in
popularity?Reasons are many and varied
■ Accessibility – Maps
■ Emergency Situations – Location Device
■ Property – Tracking of Stolen Items
■ Real-Time Communication – Information Sharing
■ Advertising – The almighty driver?
17. Advertising and LBS
Advertising & Marketing achieve enormous amounts of growth through LBS
■ Mobile Selling
■ Pin-Point Individual Needs
■ Attract New Customers
■ Increase Engagement
■ Drive Conversions
Your interests
What apps have you installed on your phone, what features have you enabled or disabled.
Where you are
Are you in town, are you into fashion, possible geo-fencing for limitations of phone from corporate perspective.
Your wallet
One radical idea would suggest LBS is a new form algorithmic sales.
Network of satellites that orbit the earth at fixed points above the planet and beam down signals to anyone on earth with a GPS receiver
Originally designed for military and intelligence applications at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s
1G - Locating via measuring power levels and antenna patterns and uses the concept that a powered mobile phone always communicates wirelessly with one of the closest base stations.
Spatial analysis is a set of techniques for analyzing spatial data. The results of spatial analysis are dependent on the locations of the objects being analyzed
Entities of LBSs
Mobile devices:
Mobile phones, tablets, PC
Software
OS Out of box configurations
OS default apps
Added bloatware from manufacturer and service provider
End user installed apps what's turned on?
Network Infrastructure Specialists
Vendors of networking components
Support companies for service providers
Positioning component
GPS, WLAN, Mobile Communication Network
Service Providers
Mobile Phone Service Providers
Vodafone, Three, Tesco Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Eir
Application providers
Offer different services to the user
e.g. Finding a route to a place
The increase in Location Based Services being developed and utilized are considered many and varied.
As we can see from the slide itself factors such as…
Access: the ability to find or locate an item or individual in itself has driven the increase in this area. Mapping and tracking through the use of GPS and RFID as already alluded to by my colleagues, has allowed for pretty much an instantaneous, location finding ability of people or things. How many of us use our smartphone through Maps to find our way around towns or cities locally and Globally, or track orders of delivery for which we have ordered?
Real-Time Communication/Information Sharing: the ability to engage and connect with people/customers/business/services in real time.
This in itself, leads us to the next item on the list, the item of Emergency Situations: Locating an individual in time of crisis or emergency, or where a broken down vehicle is or where a collision has occurred, can be carried out by the use of such Location Based Services. Locating a lost group or individual can be of paramount importance. As we’ve witnessed from recent events in Paris, this ability allows for social calming and greater knowledge to society. Facebook activated their “Safety Check” facility (which they also used in Japan and Nepal around Natural Disasters previously) soon after the attacks in Paris. It uses geolocation to identify users who live or may be traveling in an area by a disaster. The social-media network then sends these users a notification asking about their safety, and encouraging them to “check–in” to let friends know that they are safe.
An example of how Fleet companies are using such tools to drive down costs of doing business, and to track driver behaviour relating to business spending, further strengthens the drive in popularity of such developments. These developments can literally save lives and money!
Property: and the location of same is also driving up the popularity of Location Based Services. How many of you have enabled ‘Find my iPhone’ or some other form of monitoring or tracking device on your phones? The ability to locate items of personal property is of paramount importance to people.
To feel safe & secure in being able to find your property in case of theft or due to loss is a big driver in the popularity of Location Based Services!
Lastly though on this slide, the overriding feeling is that the increase in popularity is driven by Advertising: Plain & simply put, a good old fashioned ‘shakedown’!
The area of advertising is considered the biggest driver of Location Based Services in this current day.
The ubiquity of the smartphone and its omni-presence in life Today means the ability to sell and achieve actual ‘sales on the move’ has grown exponentially.
The modern day human being is an even greater economic access point, we are, in a sense, a walking, talking Cash Machine!
The use of Location Based Services provides business & service providers the ability to pin-point an individual, to as an exact location as currently possible, and derive from their information, what their needs and wants are at any given time.
This extremely focused approach for advertising & the selling of goods, achieved through the use of GPS, RFID & GeoFencing capabilities, provides to attract new Customers, which leads to the increase in Real-time engagement and ultimately drives the conversions of the would be ‘window shopper’ to the budding customer and potential advocate!
The sense of community the consumer can drive from this approach drives up the loyalty and advocacy of the customer and ultimately increases the growth and potential market share of the product or service to a business.
Depending on the needs of the organization there are several types of Location Based Marketing:
◦ Location Triggered advertisement
◦ Location Based Social Media
◦ Check-in Based Contests and Games
◦ Local Search and Exploration Advertising
◦ Location Branded Application
◦ Proximity marketing
As the slide suggests there have been a couple of well documented cases within the Marketing & Advertising arena relating to the ability of Location Based Services.
Meat Pack, a Guatemalan shoe store, launched their location-based campaign with the intention of stealing customers from competitor stores.
By setting up Geo Fences around each competitor store, Meat Pack was able to target their key audience: people shopping for trainers!
Every time those who had the Meat Pack app installed on their phone, entered a competitor store, Meat Pack sent a discount in the form of a countdown timer starting at 99% discount.
This countdown reduced by 1% every second, the user then had to run to the nearest Meat Pack store where the timer would stop as soon as they entered, leaving them with whatever discount percentage was still displayed on their handset! Genius, no?
Within one week of the campaign launching, Meat Pack had stolen over 600 shoppers from competitors and one very speedy customer managed to get 89% off a pair of shoes!
CONVERSION DRIVE – NO DISCOUNT JUST PUSHING KNOWLEDGE/RAISING AWARENESS!
In the UK, Bulmer’s partnered with O2 to use location-based services to encourage customers to try Bulmers in their nearest pub.
Placecast, who offer location-based marketing services, created Geo Fences with a radius of 0.5 miles around over 1000 pubs in the UK that sold Bulmers.
When O2 subscribers, fitting the Bulmer’s target demographic, walked past these areas, they were sent an MMS message informing them where they could claim their offer on Bulmer’s cider. 77,000 MMS SENT OUT IN A 4 WEEK PERIOD!
During the four week campaign, more than 50% of recipients clicked the link in the message and around 25% of recipients bought Bulmer’s at the pub they received the message for! All this as well as another 53% of recipients who bought Bulmer’s at another pub due to the raised awareness driven from the campaign.
Surely this area of development is a ‘no-brainer’, we need & want more of the above, right???
Well of course with any form of invasion of private space comes challenge!
The main concerns when it comes to the widespread deployment and implementation of LBS are:
Disclosure: When a consumer agrees to use a service that accesses location data, they are unlikely to know how his or her location data may be used in ways beyond enabling that service. For example, location data may be shared with third parties unknown to the consumer.
Due to the lack of information surrounding who these third parties are and the lack of reassurances to how secure their environments are there is an increased likelihood that the information could be compromised.
The idea of Tracking Behaviour: Since consumers more often than not carry their mobile devices with them and can use them for various purposes, location data along with data collected on the device may be used to form a comprehensive record upon which an individual’s activities may be inferred. Compiling such data over time allows companies to create a richly detailed profile of an individuals behaviour, including habits, preferences, and routines - private information that could be exploited.
Consumers may believe that using these personal profiles for purposes other than providing a location-based service constitutes an invasion of privacy.
Identity Theft: Criminals can use location data to steal identities when location data is disclosed, particularly when they are combined with other personal information. The risk of identity theft grows whenever individuals begin to collect data profiles, especially if the information is not maintained securely.
Keeping data long-term, particularly if it is in an identifiable profile, increases the likelihood of identity theft.
Personal Security: Location data may be used by criminals to identify an individual’s present or probable future location.
This knowledge may then be used to harm the individual or his property through, for instance, stalking or theft.
Surveillance: Law enforcement agencies can obtain location data through various methods, such as a court order, and such data can be used as evidence. However, according to various reports, law enforcement agents could potentially track innocent people, such as those who happened to be in the vicinity of a crime or disturbance, wrongly.