CHAAR:A Location Based Product OfferAdvertisement App

S.M. Mohi-Us Sunnat, Amitabha ChakrabartyDepartment of Computer Science and Engineering

BRAC University45 Mohakhali, Dhaka-1212, Bangladesh

Email: suncha629@gmail.com, amitabha@bracu.ac.bd

Abstract—Shopping is a major part of this modern era for bothMen and Women. CHAAR1 App dynamically help the users tofind out their desire and favorite products. Besides it will givethe notification about the shops which will have sale when usersare around that shops or market. Moreover, this App will showthe route between the users location and the market by usingGoogle Map. The Seller can promotion their products which isin sale or new in the market so that the buyers can easily tracktheir favorite products. In addition, it will help the users to savetheir time and energy for shopping.

Keywords: Location Based service, GPS, Google Map, Android,Mobile App.

I. INTRODUCTION

The booming growth of the mobile devices2 taught usthe importance of staying connected anywhere any place.Now anyone can be reached around the globe if that indi-vidual is carrying a mobile device having voice and/or dataconnection enabled. The advancement of technology madeall this possible. Today’s mobile phones are equipped willfunctionalities that are much beyond voice and SMS. Recentmobile phones are much more powerful than some of thepersonal computers (PCs) may be 10/12 years back andenabled with the capabilities running much more calculationintensive applications (Apps). Along with the functionalitiesof data services (such as email, browsing,etc) there are anotherservice that modern mobile phones can provide such as senseof device location. With built in receiver, mobile phonesaccess global positioning system (GPS3) satellites to detectit’s location accurately (around 10/ 50 meters error). Thisfeature opens up a new domain called location based services(LBSs) [1] where a user can have information based on thelocation of the mobile phone. When initially introduced, LBSwhere limited to product advertisement, such as promotionaloffers in a market place or in airport lounge etc. New andemerging LSB enabled application applications are in hugedemand from the user domain [2]. In emergency situationwhen the current location is very important to pinpoint theaffected area, location based information or service comes torescue. System such as alerting the fire brigade in an event of

1CHAAR is Bangla for SALE in English2http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.CEL.SETS.P23http://www.gps.gov/

a fire, location based service allows the fire fighters to locatethe victims. Similarly in the need of emergency blood, a bloodbank can locate potential individuals of particular blood groupsusing location based service 4.

In this paper, we are proposing use of LBS in the areaof mobile advertisement5. We proposed a framework for anandroid App that will enable user to sense the markets nearbyhim/her. And the app will also notify user of any promotionaloffer from the shops in the nearby markets. Promotional offerswill be notified based on user interest. Our prototype currentlysupports Dhanmondi area and near by shopping malls. But canbe mapped to the entire Dhaka city or for all over Bangladeshby adding new store locations in the location database.

II. GENERAL IDEA

This development is based on two very popular things.One is Shopping and another is Geo-Location Based SaleAdvertising [8]. We always like to have something extra. Ifwe can get that for shopping that will be always welcomed.There are a lots of local and international brand for clothswhich are very popular in our country. During discount period,their selling static increases but most of the buyer are not getthe in time information of the discount so that many peoplemiss the offer. Though some people informed by friends, TVads, social media or local banners, posters etc. But now thecustomer acceptance for location-based ads is possible dueto advancements in mobile technology as well as becausecompanies will be understood that location is only one oftargeting dimensions. If the ad will be supposed be effective,it will have to be more relevant, more context oriented, moretailored. We dynamically show a particular market or shopwhere a retailer promotes an on-sale product.

III. RELATED WORK

There are some similar projects like Location Based Intel-ligent Advertisement [3]. This is a project where Open Streetis used and this project notifies the user about the nearestMarkets, Shops, Chain Stores etc.But in our project we areusing Google Map and we also do almost similar thing but weare showing the advertisement of on-sale shopping productsof the nearest markets or shops. It wont notify the users of a

4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Location-based service5http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/mobile-advertising

market where none on-sale is running. There are other appswhere LBS is used for product advertisement [4], [5] Thisads targeting is looking at all factors that might influenceeach consumers purchasing decisions, such as nearby venues,events, the weather, and neighborhood demographics such asthe ages and gender, traffic conditions etc.

A. Our Contribution

In this work an android application6 is designed keeping inview both the consumer as well as the retailer. For advertisingany promotional offer, retailers have to use retailer interface forput product(s) advertisement server database. The App wouldfetch the updated record from the database and displays thatto the consumer side. Each of the two parts have been discussin detail in the following sections.

1) Why Android: In Bangladesh, Android, Apple and Win-dows Phone is the main Operating System for mobile phones.But Android is the main OS [6] in our country. More than70% mobile users use Android. Fig 1 show the pie chart ofthe Android user statistics. So this platform is the best way toreach the users. Besides, this platforms devices are so availableand start from very cheap budget. As user experiences, androidis very user friendly. So in every sector android is better thanother platform in Bangladesh and thats why I choose thisplatform.

Fig. 1: Android phone use in Dhaka City[6]

B. Database Description

This section highlights the database used in the developmentof this App. This database has two parts, one is the retailerpart and the other one is the consumer side. These two partsare separated using tables designed to store data for eachgroup. Below is the detail description each of the section inthe database:

1) Retailer: After registering the shope the retailer canupload product on sale in the table Product. In the Producttable, advertised product along with retailer identification willbe stored. This identification will be used to advertise theproduct with market information to the consumer side. Sinceretailer information is used to track the market for everyproduct, retailers correct registration is necessary before theretailer can start uploading the product.The registration processwill have the option of selecting the market and in some

6http://www.androidcentral.com/apps

cases shop number when registering. In cases brand shopeshaving shops all over Dhaka city will only need to updatetheir promotional offers. System will automatically displaythe offer if consumer is nearing a market that has an outletof that brand. Retailer provides all the necessary information

Fig. 2: Promotion Upload form

including shop details, market name, market location, etc inthe database. He/She can promote products and can see thepopularity of products online. Retailer also can delete productadvertisements when the time period is over or anytime retailerwants. Fig 2 shows the promotion upload form for the retailer.On the server, we are using mysql and php. There are 3

Fig. 3: Retailer Side Flow Diagram

tables for the retailer. First one is retailers information, then

market information and promotional offer for products. Wehave created a php script which will make a json format [7]output of a specific table.

Fig. 4: Database Structure

We are using MySQL in the server-side. There are Fivetables in the database. Brief description of the tables aregiven below. Fig 4 shows table structure.• User: This is the users table where App user’s informationwill be stored. This table is connected Favourite table• Favourite: This table will store consumers list of favouriteitems. Bookmarked product will be displayed to the consumerbased on the entry in this table. This table is connected withProducts table• Products: List of products which will be uploaded by theretailer will be stored in this table• Sellers: Here the retailer’s information will be stored• Market: All markets with the geo location and addresseswill be stored in this table

2) Consumer: The objective of this App is to help con-sumer’s shopping experience better. With this goal in mind,the App required that from the consumer side the App willbe installed in their mobile phone. As the consumer movesaround the city and nearing a market this App will notifyany promotion offer in that market. Everyone can see theads of onsale products and nearest markets. Who Registerthis App, they will find some extra features. They will havea dashboard where they can see options like Todays Sale,Categories, Nearest Markets,Favourite products, etc. They canbookmark the products. They can see the market position fromhis/her location in Google Map with the indicate which market

has the sale.

Fig. 5: Consumer Side Flow Diagram

In Registration, Login, Product search and Product show-case, we are using com.loopj.android:android-async-http [9]and org.apache.httpcomponents:httpmime [10] libraies to re-trieve the data from server and show the products. We havemade some php script to generate JSON format output of thedatabases data. So we are retrieving the json file using JSONParsing classes. Fig 5 shows registration process flow diagram.

We are storing the data using SQLite [12] and Sharedpref-erences [11] so that user can see this product in offline. Butin Offline mode, user can’t use the google map and can’t getthe latest update of the promotions. Fig 6 show the view ofthe App from consumer side.

Fig. 6: Consumer’s View of the Promotions

For the Geo Location, we are using a third party library

of a project known as GpsTracker [13]. If the user turn onthe GPS and the Internet connectivity, they can use the geolocation and see nearest market close to their position. If GPSor the Internet connection isn’t available, user can’t access thegoogle map. Here we are using Distance API and DurationAPI which are a part of Google Map for Android v2 [14].Fig 7 shows what consumer will see when the App starts.

Fig. 7: Consumer’s View of the Application

IV. LIBRARIES USED

This section highlights some of the libraries used to developthis App. The main library is Google Play services API whichis mainly used for Google map. This API will provide accessto location, distance, durations and on in respect of a particularmobile device. Google Cloud Messaging API is used to forpush notification to the users about their favorite products.There are some built-in libraries for Material Designs. Theselibraries are used for better UI design. CircleImageView is athird party library which is used for reshape the images. Thisis mainly used for displaying images in various size display.GPSTracker is a third party library which is used for find outthe users current location and so this app will notify him/herabout the nearest on-sale offer. It will take the GPS locationin background in every 60 seconds.

V. CHALLENGES AND LIMITATIONS

This project faces some challenges in the developmentphase. One of the main challenges was to gather the exactshop/market location. To develop this project we collectedexact GPS location manually and inserted those into thedatabase. As protype this is App works only for Dhandmondiarea and markers around that area. The developers are cur-rently working on gather GPS data for most of the markets atDhaka and add those position into the database. Some issueswith the user interface design remain which can be solvedafter collecting user feedback from google play store.

VI. CONCLUSION

This paper presents a mobile application named CHAAR,that allows consumer to see promotional offers of theirfavourite products from various outlets. This is designedkeeping in mid of a very simple user interface as well asregistration process. All the offers will be authentic since onlyretailers have the option to upload/update a promotional offer.This an App this is developed using the concept of locationbased service. One of the major point of this App is that this isthe first App of this kind in Bangladesh where interest basedadvertisement is introduced. This is an app designed in such away that eliminates the security concerns for both the retailerand consumer. Only some basic information is required forregistration hence there is any issue regarding user’s onlinesecurity. Authors are working on elimination some of thelimitations mentions in the previous section.

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