Member Article

Real life is not enough

Real life is not enough

New survey reveals customers in bars and restaurants want to be online – and are more loyal to venues that offer free WiFi

November 21, 2016: Intelligent spaces company Purple surveyed over 1,000 people about how they use WiFi in bars and restaurants. The results conclusively showed that the provision of free WiFi increases customer satisfaction and repeat custom.

Eight out of ten people said being able to use WiFi in a bar or restaurant would contribute towards a positive, personalised experience. In the age group 35-44, that figure rose to 90%. In addition, nearly two thirds (60%) said being able to use WiFi when out for a drink or meal would increase their customer loyalty.

Purple’s survey results prove that there is clear demand for WiFi in bars and restaurants. If it’s available, over half (55%) said they sometimes use it, while 4 in 10 always log in. Favourite uses for WiFi included browsing the Internet (84% do this while out socialising) and keeping in touch with friends (58% use free WiFi for this).

Drilling down further into the survey results, there was also confirmation that using WiFi combined with analytics and marketing tools can further boost business. By offering free WiFi to guests, accessed by social login, bars and restaurants are able to understand more about their customers, including their gender, age, hometown, interests. They can also track how often they come back. These insights help create more timely, relevant and valuable interactions, which the survey proved to be welcomed by customers.

For instance:

Over half (51%) said being rewarded for spending a certain amount, or visiting a number of times, would make them more likely to come back. Over a third (35%) said that being able to access exclusive gifts or offers via WiFi would make them a more devoted customer. 45% said being offered money off their bill for paying online, or via an app, would increase their loyalty (this figure rose to 51% of respondents aged 45-54)

Purple’s survey also highlights a need for bars and restaurants to maximise online marketing opportunities and project a positive online image. Three out of ten said that they use the public WiFi in bars and restaurants to check for promotions on drinks and food, which presents an opportunity for venues to create appealing offers. Just under a quarter of people use it to look for reviews – great news for venues with an impeccable online reputation.

Providing WiFi, and gathering customer data as a result, opens up a means of marketing to people after they leave the venue. But, as Purple’s survey reveals, customers have strong preferences regarding how this should be done. Eight out of ten people would prefer to receive information and offers by email, while just under a third preferred contact via an app, and a quarter would opt for SMS communications. Only 10% would like to receive snail mail, and 5% would prefer a phone call.

Venues that misuse the marketing opportunity opened up by WiFi analytics by failing to target communications effectively are likely to alienate customers rather than earn their allegiance. Two thirds of survey respondents (64%) said receiving irrelevant messages from a brand negatively affects their customer loyalty.

Purple’s survey gives confidence to bars and restaurants that the investment of providing free guest WiFi can be offset by the business benefits it brings. Gavin Wheeldon, CEO of Purple, says, “We’re pleased that our survey confirms how WiFi differentiates bars and restaurants from competitors and helps drive repeat custom. There’s a huge opportunity for venue owners to respond to the demand for WiFi and utilise it for targeted and timely marketing. It’s a massive help in turning casual customers into brand ambassadors.”

For further information on the data, please contact Liberate Media:

Purple Press contacts:

Lloyd Gofton - lloyd@liberatemedia.com - +44 (0) 7919 353 484

Justine Holman - justine@liberatemedia.com - +44 (0) 7808 608416

Catherine Goddard – catherine@liberatemedia.com - +44 (0) 7720 635048

Ends

About Purple http://www.purple.AI

Purple is an intelligent spaces company. It evolved from Purple WiFi, the cloud-based marketing and analytics WiFi software company, to take the lead in real-time analytics and marketing for venues and businesses that want to engage with visitors and understand the use of physical spaces. Purple refers to this process as ‘Intelligent Spaces’ and can help brands to learn more about their location, customer base and help them to take action.

With 18 million users across 73 countries, Purple works with a range of brands and venues, including Indiana Pacers, Merlin Entertainment, Bloomin Brands, CenturyLink, Molson Coors, Legoland, Jaguar, United Wireless Arena, City of York and TUI.

It has a global agreement in place with Westcon Comstor, in addition to an active reseller base of over 960 in 60 countries. Purple employs over 90 full time staff and currently has offices in the UK, US, Chile, Madrid, Singapore and Melbourne with more offices planned.

Huge growth is being seen in all sectors, including hospitality, where people have time to spend online, retail, where footfall tracking is essential, healthcare, offering transparency around service and communication and entire cities moving towards the Internet of Things.

Purple divides its offering into two specific segments: small businesses and enterprise customers. Small businesses can continue to take advantage of Purple’s free guest WiFi product and purchase a cloud software license, which allows open access to marketing and analytics tools. Enterprise customers have the option of four product lines: WiFi, Location, and two new offerings: Fusion and Provision.

Purple WiFi is the well-established guest WiFi, analytics and marketing product. Purple Location is a location based services product that works to actually pinpoint devices, enable heat mapping, provide zone flow information and enable journey management. Purple Fusion is the latest offering, enabling connection to any type of data source, which can then be analysed and actioned. A variety of different data sources will be utilised to harvest information about any physical space. Purple Provision is a commercial product more suitable for businesses, enabling a completely secure guest and staff WiFi environment. This uses automatic certificate provisioning instead of WPA or other encrypted WiFi SSID’s, which are intrinsically insecure for a BYOD environment.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Justine Holman .