first published week of: 02/25/2013
The notion of remixing and aggregating is at the heart of emerging location intelligence platforms. We have already seen MR firms adapt by having GIS specialists in house. However, have we adapted existing methodologies to the opportunities presented by the mobile universe?
At this session, four companies – GoSpotCheck, Nearbuy, Placed and PlaceIQ presented their offerings of capturing and interpreting geo-specific data. Some were straightforward in replacing or augmenting a service (GoSpotCheck and PlaceIQ) to aggregating data for mining purposes (PlaceIQ) and the detail grabbing of data to deliver better customer offers (Nearbuy and Placed).
The core themes emerging were that the future of location intelligence is mobile driven. And the full functionality of and data available from mobile devices will be explored. There is also the creative aggregation of public and private data sources to yield detailed databases that can be integrated with mobile environments, to yield new forms of normative data, to facilitate insights in decision making. At this same time, there is an emerging “creep” factor – there are lots of data being offered up unknowingly by mobile device wielding consumers and being appended to these databases – the cost of free has an information offering and public profile attached. The research industry must take note of this as emerging platforms continue to keep pushing the envelope of these boundaries.