Sure, but the Beacon technology was designed for this cheaper type of use (dumb beacon, smart phone) from the get-go - people working on it probably may have wanted it to be useful not just for the biggest chains, but also smaller franchises and mom-and-pop stores (why limit your market prematurely?). In the alternate reality in which BLE beacons were never created, maybe Wal-Mart did its own major project to get the same results the hard way.