Foursquare launches Foursquare Analytics

By

Cassidy Mantor

Published
Mar 21, 2017

Foursquare has launched Foursquare Analytics, a new retail traffic tracking platform for brands and retailers to better understand their consumers.

Building on its success as a way for consumers to check in at various retail locations, Foursquare has now launched a new dashboard designed to track foot traffic at retail.

Retailers will be able to access data and sort through various consumer demographics including age, gender, and loyalty including whether they are new or returning customers. Foursquare Analytics will also be able to track where a retailer stands in comparison to its competitors in the market. With Foursquare Analytics, any retailer regardless of size can participate, a new development for Foursquare. Previously retailers had to enter into a specific agreement with Foursquare to have access to this type of data.

Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck explained of the new product, "Oftentimes a company sets out to solve one particular problem and builds technology to do it, and then later realizes that the solution has much wider applicability. That’s what happened here."

The actual data is collected through over 100,000 location tracking points in partnership with Foursquare's existing location database. These come from partnerships including those with Snapchat and Swarm. Data is sent to Foursquare and is processed when users elect to always enable their location services.

Glueck continued to explain Foursquare Analytics saying, "We built our location tech... [and] then realized that being able to recognize when phones walk in and out of 93 million public places worldwide created an incredible data set for aggregate and anonymous analytics. It turns out, this capability can solve many business problems outside of our own."

Foursquare is famous for accurate data analysis. It gained significant credibility when it predicted foot traffic would drop 29% after Chipotle's E. coli outbreak last year. Actual numbers revealed the chain's foot traffic dropped 30%.

H&M and lifestyle brand Equinox have already signed on as early users, but the platform will remain open for any size retailer.