NFC Smart Products for Dummies
You might not realize it, but the biggest companies are using NFC. Apple, Samsung, and Google all use the technology for wireless payments. In doing so, these brands have revolutionized the way people make payments. The paradigm has shifted from pulling out wallets to tapping phones.
Just like NFC changed how we make payments, it can also change the way people interact with products and content. NFC can be embedded in anything to provide customers with better product experiences and enhance brand relationships with them. Customer focused brands like adidas, Spyder Active Sports, and Staple Design use NFC technology to make their products smart and more interactive. Smart products can elevate customer experiences by changing the ways customers communicate with brands, directly through the products. Beyond what they’ve already accomplished with the technology, NFC holds the potential to do so much more.
NFC can be utilized to solve some of the biggest marketing challenges. It can help to establish a direct connection with customers, increase brand awareness, lower cost to acquire, drive additional revenue, add value, communicate brand story, engage customers, and provide insights into brand loyalists.
So, what makes products smart?
The term “smart product” is an ambiguous label that has come to encapsulate any sort of product that can process data and/or connect to the Internet. There has been no specific terminology coined around objects that specifically connect to the Internet via NFC. The closest label to describe such products is “NFC-enabled”, but widely, those objects become lumped into the smart product or “connected product” categories.
While devices such as smartphones, FitBits, Apple Watches and so on fall under the smart product category more directly, NFC-enabled products are those which specifically utilize NFC as a conduit to connect products to the Internet and, in the process, digital content. To launch the digital content, customers tap an NFC-enabled item with their phone.
Brands have begun integrating NFC into their products as a 1:1 communication channel between themselves and their customers. By creating experiences crafted with a certain goal in mind, brands are able to solve marketing challenges, and better understand how customers interact with their products and content. When it comes to the types of products that can be enabled, anything goes. From apparel to footwear, keychains to handbags, labels to packaging, machinery to cookware… truly anything can integrate NFC into its offering.
NFC experiences are most valuable when they are dynamic, shifting with a user’s context. Context involves things like user interactions, location, time of day, in-store/post-sale. As the customer interacts with an NFC-enabled product, the experience should adapt, taking contextual factors into consideration and reacting accordingly. It is important to bear this in mind when exploring different use cases, as it only helps to understand how infinite NFC applications are.
Now that you know the basics of NFC enabled smart products take it the next level. Check out our post on the 10 real life applications of NFC and The Complete Guide to NFC.
This article was originally published on Blue Bite.
