Hitachi to test GPS-based shopping service
Providing consumers with location-based pitches has been a dream of merchants ever since GPS-enabled devices began hitting the market. But early efforts to make it work, like GeePS, failed, in part because of low penetration of the handheld GPS units needed to make it work. Now Hitachi hopes to solve that problem by partnering with NTT DoCoMo to provide GPS-enabled cellphones for the test of its Chizukuru location-based shopping service in Japan. Hitachi has signed up 350 stores in Tokyo to join the test, which will allow merchants to provide coupons, and will also offer location-sensitive news and information to consumers. Hitachi expects to have 500,000 users on the service by 2008. Maybe in Japan; we somehow think that, in the U.S., consumers would very quickly tire of getting beeped with GPS spam every time they walk (or, more likely, drive) past a Pizza Hut or Target.
