Marketing and Services Leveraging O2O and Customer Big Data

JCB has developed "Ima-Recommend! (Recommend Now!)", a new coupon and information delivery service linked to customer card use.

This service provides real time online-to-offline marketing designed to guide customers to merchants by delivering the latest information corresponding to customer demographics, purchasing trends, and other data. Ahead of the full-scale rollout in the second half of 2015, JCB is conducting a feasibility trial in Shinjuku, the urban area in Tokyo, from October 2014 to March 2015 in cooperation with merchants.

Special offer information and coupons are sent to the customer’s mobile phone based on such factors as customer characteristics, selected interests and preferences, and card payment information and conditions set by the merchant providing the particular offer.

Most coupon services require customers to search for coupons themselves when they go shopping. There are also location-based coupon services, but location alone does not guarantee a good match between the coupon and the customer. That is why more information is needed. Moreover, there are many marketing programs that make use of "big data", but most lack the real time advantage because they use batch processing when sending coupons to customers. For merchants, this means that marketing information does not reach the customer at the best time. "Ima-Recommend!" has three features that address these problems.

1.
When a customer makes a purchase using a JCB card in Shinjuku, the transaction authorization system (which checks whether the payment is valid) triggers "Ima-Recommend!" to send coupons and other special offer information in real time from merchants in the vicinity.

2.
Customer information including demographic characteristics, selected interests and preferences, and purchasing trends are matched with conditions set by the merchant providing the offer. Only coupons that match customer preferences are sent.

3.
Future customer activity can be predicted based on JCB cardmember demographic and purchasing information so that the customer receives a comprehensive package of special offer information from a variety of merchants, shopping malls, other major facilities, and for events.