By Dianne See Morrison - Tue 22 Jul 2008 05:41 AM PST
An interesting interview on Bluetooth marketing in China, which is apparently hot right now in major cities such as Shanghai and Beijing. China business research firm Pacific Epoch has a lengthy and quite frank interview with Chinese Bluetooth marketing firm Pioco about the ups and downs of its business.
The two year old start-up, which is backed by 3i and Walmart among others, has built a network of Bluetooth hotspots—usually located in restaurants, shopping malls and other commercial areas—in several Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, to allow it to send marketing messages through Bluetooth connections. So far, they have some 1,500 terminals spread throughout the cities, with another 3500 to be installed by September. By year’s end they hope to have converted some 22,000 locations who have signed up to the service, to have a total of 15,000 stations.
CEO Steve Chao, formerly CTO at China mobile search firm Cgogo, reports that for every device that gets paired, about half of them accept the message, a conversion rate that he says is closer to direct sales. At their Bluetooth marketing events in which a hosts tells visitors to turn on their Bluetooth, the company has seen conversion rates of 70-80 percent. The company eventually plans to expand beyond Bluetooth marketing, and says that it will get into location-based browsing. For example, if you’re near one of their stations, you can request the nearest coffee shops in the area. Chao notes that for now, Bluetooth services are better than mobile search for this because Bluetooth returns results much quicker, plus there’s no GPRS charges for the data.
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