In Store Mobile Apps, the Next Big Opportunity for Shopper Marketing

In 2006, I was involved in my first mobile marketing effort that tried to provide in-store offers to shoppers as a loyalty program. It was very difficult to get the technology in place and the biggest obstacle was acceptance of mobile as a loyalty platform by retailers.
But now as mobile devices are increasing and consumers are starting to use them more for their every day activities, retail store owners are starting to take notice of that and working to introduce innovative methods to reach their consumers through their mobile devices.

Loyalty programs using traditional methods like Loyalty Cards and Direct Marketing Efforts are becoming outdated as consumers are wanting to move away from their numerous plastic cards to easy mobile apps in their smart phones. The standard suite of offerings provided by these cards such as discounts, free shipping, receipts by email, event tickets are now available through smart phone applications.

The convergence of Smart phone technology advancements, change in consumer behavior and the ubiquity of handheld devices is providing a big opportunity for Retail Store Owners and Brand Manufacturers to reach consumers directly while the consumers are shopping in the stores.



Recently Starbucks released select mobile transactions statistics for 2011. In it release the big US coffee shop giant said its mobile in-store transactions using the ubiquitous bar code technology has soared past 26 million transactions. They also mentioned that their new augmented reality smartphone app, a great hit among consumers. The big news here is this increase in mobile transactions happened in six months.

Looks like Starbucks is not the only retailer in the game. CKE Restaurants, the parent company for Hardee's and Carl’s Junior, launched a smartphone loyalty app, Star Rewards, for the iPhone and Android systems. Among other things, it generates offers based on the user’s location. Customers that check in can win free food and other prizes.

In a related news, I saw Aisle Buyer LLC, a leading provider of in-store mobile commerce solutions for retailers, restaurants and brands, release new data highlighting retailers’ growing interest in in-store mobile shopping applications.

The survey, which was conducted in December 2011, reveals that while only 14 percent of respondents currently have a mobile application for in-store use, 50 percent of those who do not are planning to introduce a shopping app in 2012.  Among this group of retailers that plan to build apps for in-store use:

Looking at these two separate growth curves on the m-commerce space, the increasing number of mobile transactions in store and the increasing number of mobile apps in-store, it is very obvious that the much needed convergence between the change in customer behavior and the move by retailers to embrace mobile devices is happening very fast with multitude of opportunities for Retailers and Brand Manufacturers to engage shoppers inside the store before they make their purchase decisions.

While m-marketing and loyalty card apps remain in the early adopter stage and a number of wrinkles need to be worked out—enormous potential exists in things like how to deliver geo-location-based coupons effectively, how to deliver loyalty points to customers across different retailer platforms, how to deliver and synchronize payments at stores etc. and they represent an enormous opportunity for shopper marketing.