Patent ID: 8612278
Filing Date: 2013-12-17
Classification: G06Q,H04M,H04W

Abstract:
1. A method of providing a location-based service to an operator of a facility, the facility being a physically defined structure formed by physical walls comprising: providing in the facility a series of location nodes, the location nodes including transceivers of wireless signals, and being for transmitting the signals received to a central hub for processing the received signals; the nodes being located in strategic positions in the facility, the nodes being for wireless communication with movable human entities in the facility thereby to establish the location and movement of human entities in the facility, the human entities having wireless communicating units for transmitting and receiving signals wirelessly to the nodes, each unit being unique for each human entity; the nodes including detection devices, the devices including radio transmitter/receivers, the devices being capable of detecting the zone entry and exit events of the human entities, and wireless communicating units of human entities, the wireless communicating units being a mobile phone equipped with selectively a Bluetooth or WI-FI radio or NFC system; the nodes providing data about the movement of the human entities in the facility, such data including entry into the facility and departure from the facility, and additionally at least one of amount of time spent in the vicinity of nodes located in strategic positions; the travel path of the entities in the facility; and the data being transmitted to the operator in at least one of real time or being for storage and analysis at a later time for use by the operator; and an algorithm, executed by a computer processor, for processing the data, the data including entry into the facility, departure from the facility and number of stops made throughout the facility, wherein the algorithm establishes a visitor checkout rate for different size basket visitors from empirical checkout data; and visitor entry rate and visitor number of stops information is used to determine the number of different sized basket visitors.