Omni-channel audience and data firm Tapvalue has unleashed Tapbox on the world of brick-and-mortar retailing. It joins a growing list of hardware devices that give analytics data offline customer’s journey.

Tapbox is placed near a store’s point of sale. From here it detects nearby mobile phone signals and collects relevant data, which is then transmitted to Tapvalue’s central repository.

Compared to the more popular beacon-only technologies, Tapbox does not require a store visitor to install an app on their smartphone. Tapvalue has said that Wi-fi needs to be enabled, but no other action is needed.

In-store profiling

Under the hood, Tapvalue matches in-store data with digital profiles to give a full view of a consumer’s journey in-store. This can then be married with a retailer’s online data to provide detailed omni-channel analysis.

Developed by Tapvalue, a company that has only been in existence since 2012, the technology creates the kind of profiles that will let retailers communicate with consumers on a one-to-one basis.

Tapvalue states that all the insights it harvests are completely anonymous and no personal data is recorded.