New data released by the Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) and Venuelabs examines location-based consumer engagement across 4 verticals, aiming to establish benchmarks for the local consumer experience. According to the study results, overall local feedback – whether delivered via tips, checkins, reviews, comments, or photos – tends to be positive, ranging from a high of 96% positive feedback to a low of 57% for quick service restaurants (QSRs).
“Local” sentiment varies when looking at the different attributes of customer experience, though. For example, in the retail sector, sentiment surrounding prices is far more likely to be positive than negative (30% vs. 8%), while the opposite is true when talking about staff (68% negative; 30% positive).
Looking at the channels in which engagement occurs, Foursquare dominates in each of the 4 sectors (retail; QSR, fast casual restaurants, and hotels), but it’s a race for second, with Citysearch taking that spot for retail and QSR, Google+ for fast casual, and Facebook for hotels.
While consumer engagement ballooned by 500% during 2012, merchants across the 4 categories studied are missing between 83% and 88% of local feedback, according to the study.
About the Data: The benchmark data is derived from Venuelabs’ tracking of nearly 300,000 locations in 190+ countries. The above data is limited to the US.