Skyhook Creates Customer 'Personas' Using Device Location Data

In today’s connected world, simply knowing your location can be a valuable asset to the business world.

Location data technology company Skyhook uses its hybrid positioning technology, which leverages GOS, Wi-Fi and cell tower signals, to precisely identify device location. The company the uses that positioning data to create what it calls “Personas,” a list of insights about potential customers and audience segments based on location and behavior. Although the mobile device location data is anonymous, it can be aggregated to create Personas for millions of mobile device users.

The Sample

Over a four-month period from Aug. 22 to Dec. 19, 2015, Skyhook logged more than 312 million data points from 2.7 million device users around the world. In the U.S. alone, Skyhook logged 240 million data points from 2.0 million users. The more logs per person, the more information that can be extracted from the data. In the four-month period mentioned above, Skyhooks was able to log between at least 11 data points per user for more than 1.2 million users.

Why Is This Information Useful?

Retail investors might be interested to know about foot traffic to particular stores. Skyhooks noted that 20,122 users shopped at Dollar General Corp. DG during that four-month stretch, while 18,557 shopped at Dollar Tree, Inc. DLTR. In that same period, only 12 users shopped at Dillard’s, Inc. DDS.

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But beyond location, these Personas tell retailers other useful information about the behavior and traits of their customer base. For example, among the 226,711 total retail shoppers identified, 90,491 were deemed family shoppers, while 31,442 have no children. In addition, 25,227 also shopped for women’s apparel, while 7,676 of them were pet owners.

There is a greater than 70-percent chance that each individual shopper was Caucasian and roughly a 10-percent chance he or she was African American. Young adults and senior citizens did more retail shopping than middle-aged users, while only a small fraction of users had no college degree.

The more connected the world gets, the more opportunity there will be for third-party data collection and data analysis. Although the field of big data science is still in its nascent stages, companies like Skyhook are on the cutting edge of an industry that will ultimately be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.