Interview with Smart Space Pang Tao: The Road of Pioneers in Traditional Industries in the Age of Big Data.

when it comes to big data, we are good at it in this field, and we are familiar with it. Most of them are Internet companies, and they are based on a large number of online user interactions as data support, so as to achieve the purpose of accurate marketing and improve efficiency and revenue. However, offline data collection has always been the pain point and difficulty of the industry.

Zhulu.com made an exclusive interview with Pang Tao, CTO of Smart Space, hoping to help you understand how offline big data can be effectively collected and utilized through their product "Traffic Box" and how traditional industries should face it when embracing the Internet.

One afternoon, I met Pang Tao at Starbucks in Xinzhongguan. He looked in a hurry. He just went to Microsoft to talk about cooperation in product promotion, and he was interviewed by me in a dusty way.

Grounding hardware, passenger flow box in smart space

Pang Tao's company is called smart space. In his view, there are so many people in the world, and as a company focusing on offline big data collection, it should cover all ground spaces as a matter of course. "I have a responsibility to help all ground spaces and realize the ability to manage passenger flow by using big data.

Smart Space is not well-known in the industry, and its product "Passenger Flow Box" is not well known by users because it is a 2B-end product, but this does not hinder their success in offline big data.

traditional market research is to find a market research company, do some questionnaires, and infer market customers through statistical principles. The passenger flow box is to help merchants collect enough passenger flow data, provide solutions for monitoring the passenger flow of merchants, and help retail enterprises to better realize market research. An accurate user can be identified through the retention of a device and data.

for example, after a customer is identified, it can be identified that a customer leaves from 9: to 1: , and it can be identified that the customer has been staying during this time period after refreshing every 5 seconds. If we can monitor that this customer comes to the store four times a month on average within half a year, then the store can know the value of this customer. The radius of the passenger flow box is about 3 meters, which can identify the model of mobile phone equipment with great accuracy. The reason why it can be monitored by wireless network is actually very simple.

With the advent of the mobile Internet era, everyone will have a mobile phone, and these mobile phones will emit radio waves. If a device can hear this radio wave and recognize it at the same time, it can accurately calculate the number of passengers by recording the number of mobile phones. We know that in the process of radio wave transmission, there must be a feature code with hardware, and this feature code is fixed. By monitoring this, a consumer's consumption in various stores can be locked.

what kind of product is the passenger flow box? In layman's terms, this is a hardware product that monitors the passenger flow in the store, but it is probably the most grounded hardware I have ever seen. At the front end, the passenger flow box mainly uses the economically mature wireless wifi technology to identify wireless devices such as customers' mobile phones, and then can accurately and conveniently count valuable data such as passenger flow, residence time, store entry rate, return rate and so on. At the back end, professional and easy-to-understand passenger flow related data reports are provided through the system background to help customers realize the perfect combination of offline accurate data and CRM, and finally achieve precise marketing.

At present, passenger flow boxes have probably cooperated with more than 5 physical stores, and this year's goal is to promote them to about 1, stores, mainly through 2B channels. At present, they have also obtained angel round financing.

Difficult pioneers, pioneering road of offline data

In Pang Tao's view, Internet giants can't fundamentally solve the needs of offline stores to obtain users. For example, for a specific offline restaurant, how many people come to eat in the restaurant a day, who will come to eat here, and what kind of people these people are. In fact, for a physical store, he basically has no means, and the so-called giant can't solve this dilemma.

of course, many offline stores will have some stupid means, but these means often have many disadvantages.

firstly, there are a lot of data missing, so the monitoring can't achieve effective accuracy. All stores like Zara have three cameras, which are used to count the number of people in the stores. There is also a smart 7-eleven convenience store, which has a counter. As soon as you open the door, the counter will automatically add 1, and when you open it, it will add 1. In fact, it is not that merchants do not want to monitor these numbers, but that there are not enough means to monitor these numbers. Like 711, a bunch of 2 people opened the door at once, and everyone monitored it together, so there was no way to accurately monitor it. Cameras have the same problem, and there will be a phenomenon that a person appears in two cameras and is counted twice. And the accuracy of image recognition is not very high, which makes it impossible for you to calculate exactly how many people came.

secondly, even if the specific number of people is monitored, it is impossible to know the passenger flow. How many people have come in the store? This is only the first step of offline big data. For businesses, what are they more concerned about is what consumers are most concerned about? Where did they go in the store, where did they stay the longest, and so on? These data can help offline stores adjust their commodity strategies quickly. This kind of heat map, which is very common online to monitor flow, has no solution offline.

finally, the final conversion rate of the number of people arriving at the store. I believe this will be the most concerned data for all businesses. Which of the consumers who came to the store went to the fitting room to try on clothes? Now the monitoring is based on the data after sales. How many orders have the store sold? What is the unit price of this customer? But in fact, a brand has done a lot of marketing, and there is actually a cost to this store. Even if it is a natural flow, it is also a high cost to get this good location, so it is the flow. Merchants certainly hope to find a way to make the user's acquisition cost lower.

The battle of data giants, the conflict between cooperation and competition

In Pang Tao's view, online traffic is relatively easy to be monitored, no matter what webpage you visit. However, when it comes to offline, there is often no effective means to monitor offline traffic. People coming and going, the turnover rate, which is the most important data for businesses, can only rely on after-sales data rudely.

This is obviously not the right thing. Pang Tao said with emotion, "We should do something for offline businesses". For a shop on the ground, it should have some means to catch its customers. But from beginning to end, many people will think that collecting data should be done by giants.

But Pang Tao doesn't quite agree with this point. In his view, BAT giants often do have this ability to help offline stores. For example, Alibaba gave them routers and POSS machines, but all these giants have a core interest appeal: "The online traffic is stagnating, so they need to extract traffic from offline", which is why Ali wants to buy Yintai.

internet giants are actually trying to do O2O for this purpose. In the past, I wanted to be able to cover from online to offline, but now I want to do how to intercept traffic from offline. They often adopt the so-called internet thinking, which simply means catering to this market through low prices or free of charge. However, the starting point of BAT is very different from that of smart space. Even if the giants give money to offline stores for free, offline businesses are not necessarily willing to cooperate with the giants.

Pang Tao said, "The core appeal of BAT is to conduct traffic from offline stores, which is terrible. We help offline stores have the ability to acquire users online and help businesses learn how to use big data for precise marketing. However, the online ability is not strong enough now, so now we are also cooperating with some online businesses, hoping to get through some big online data sources. Once with the online big data source BAT+ JD.COM, they all want to divert water from the offline, so the negotiation is extremely difficult.

offline stores are the most valuable customer resources for smart space. From the customer's point of view, there is no way to guide the passenger flow to e-commerce and online Internet giants, but this is often the basic demand of these giants. To some extent, when obtaining online data, it is often in a contradictory conflict, but Pang Tao said that offline interests should still be given priority. "What we need at least is for everyone to exchange traffic in an equal dialogue, which makes sense. Otherwise, the traffic will be wasted, and how will the offline stand?

Pain points and difficulties, making the mobile phone number the only pass

Coverage, high push cost, weak willingness of merchants to cooperate, etc. These are common pain points and difficulties, and the smart space can't be excused. Pang Tao said that Smart Space has cooperated with two large shopping centers and has been online for half a year. In some cafes and hotels, passenger flow boxes are laid.

On the question of monitoring accuracy, I mentioned a question in the interview. Simply identifying "people" through "equipment" may make it impossible to identify "who I am". Online and offline membership cards are quite popular now, and there are some specific identity information behind these cards, such as age, income, height and so on. The passenger flow box can only monitor the passenger flow, which seems to be some invalid traffic.

"The cost of membership card is too high" is a powerful response from Pang Tao. Electronic membership cards are filled with more information, which will certainly be more accurate. However, to establish a good membership card system, it needs at least millions, and separate equipment is needed to swipe the card for verification. The cost of making a membership card is 1 yuan. "In the era of big data, we don't emphasize how accurate this data is, but how big everyone gets this data. This is the core idea." The passenger flow box hopes to use the mobile phone as the only sign, then use it as the only sign of identity, and finally make the mobile phone number the only pass offline and online.

as for how to identify these mobile phone numbers, Pang Tao said that it was mainly through cooperation with the corresponding manufacturers. By comparing the identified feature codes, we will cooperate with web-certified manufacturers. "Let's count the frequencies, and they will identify people. These manufacturers can't identify the feature code of the mobile phone, but they have the mobile phone number. For example, there are 5 people in this shop, and they know the numbers of 3 people. We compared the signature and mobile phone number through three excavations. In 21, I worked as a data miner for Mobile to get through these data and serve this business.

in the end, no matter online or offline, you don't need to bring a membership card at all. Identifying a combination of mobile phone number and hardware feature code becomes a re-establishment of membership system identification. Combined with the hardware feature code obtained by scanning every 5 seconds, combined with algorithm identification, the equipment placed in various places can basically identify where this user lives. Maintain these people, and the basic lifeline of this store will be maintained. In this way, offline stores have a very good and cheap tool.

merchants' confusion, how to make use of offline traffic

The greatest significance of these data is to accurately identify the target customers of the merchants. For example, if a customer is monitored to visit the store twice in a certain period of time, it is actually a repeat customer. This can be well monitored online, but it is difficult for businesses to monitor offline.

The passenger flow box is refreshed every 5 seconds. As long as this number appears in this store, a dot will appear in the background every 5 seconds, which actually forms a basic data. On the one hand, we can locate the customer, on the other hand, we can track the customer and know where the customer went, whether he changed his clothes or not, and whether he checked out. A store like Zara is definitely not allowed to put the camera in the fitting room. At this time, monitoring is often a difficult point. Through the monitoring of the box arrangement in the store, if a customer is monitored to go to the fitting room, it can actually preliminarily judge the value of this customer to the merchant. But now the price for merchants to obtain these data is 3 yuan.

3 yuan, this is the current selling price of the passenger flow box. Besides, the merchants have to pay the service fee of 3 yuan every month. However, Pang Tao said that the service fee in 3 yuan is not mandatory, but is charged according to the service effect provided to customers. For example, Smart Space helps customers lock in 5, customers, and each customer charges 5 cents for looking for a business. These users are customers with accurate business goals. Is this worth it?

after solving the cost confusion of the merchants, it is about how to use the collected data. Pang Tao's working experience in JD.COM made him very familiar with e-commerce. "When I was working in JD.COM, I would have a meter to monitor online data, and pv, uv, etc. When I was in 618 and double 11, why could I change a product in a few minutes? If the last pair of shoes didn't come up in five minutes, I would change it immediately. When I was in double 11 last year, Jack Jones spent twice as much money as before, but the traffic still couldn't come. This means that online traffic has actually reached a bottleneck period. No matter how much money you spend, it won't grow rapidly. So this year, both JD.COM and Ali went offline, and everyone took a fancy to the offline passenger flow.

Pang Tao believes that customers' needs are always diverse, and e-commerce is a good supplement, but not all of them, and there is still no way to completely replace offline. The core factor for consumers to buy 3C products in JD.COM is that it is cheap and can be guaranteed. "If JD.COM is more expensive than others in 1 yuan, why don't you try it? Before, Suning was guaranteed to be cheaper than 1 yuan in JD.COM for a while, and then it took a lot of goods from JD.COM "

This is the reason why JD.COM has to vigorously develop third parties instead of self-supporting, and now JD.COM can't guarantee the advantage of low price. So now, whether online or offline, all roads lead to the same goal. "The key for you to maintain a customer, whether offline or online, is that the comprehensive experience and integrity give people the highest value.

offline traffic should enable businesses to make the target audience feel a good comprehensive experience and cost performance. For example, the passenger flow box has monitored that a customer will come to the store several times a month, which basically concludes that this customer should be a loyal VIP of the merchant. At this time, you can give this customer a 2% discount card directly and keep this customer completely.

These are just some preliminary data utilization. The passenger flow box should help businesses solve the two most important things-bringing new things and keeping old ones. "We have to make big data very short-answer. You can't make big data incomprehensible to everyone. Through the background of the passenger flow box, merchants can easily export data reports, which may include data such as the manager of the mall, date, number of stores, number of passengers, total number of repeat customers per day, sales volume, customer unit price and so on.

any business follows the pyramid concept, such as passenger flow, conversion rate, customer unit price and gross profit margin, which are the four most critical indicators of an enterprise, and both e-commerce and offline shops will always follow this law. The problem solved by the passenger flow box is to help the merchants to complete the information that cannot be collected. For merchants, what can be collected is always the sales of customer unit price and gross profit margin.