In times of economic hardship, the last thing a retailer who often appeals to those most affected wants is to do is anger its customers. But that’s exactly what happened to Kmart recently, as described in this March 23, 2010 RetailWire.com article titled, “Kmart’s Coupon Mistake Becomes PR Blunder.”
It’s becoming cliche to say couponing is a killer application of mobile marketing techniques, due to the ubiquity of text message enabled phones and the ease by which numeric or alphanumeric codes tied to discounts for various products can be generated. Often overlooked, however, is the fact that by its nature, mobile is a very location centric medium that forces marketers to think about geographic considerations when developing programs. After all LBS, or location based services, is becoming a term understood by nearly all those involved in the mobile ecosystem, and collecting zip code via text message interaction is becoming a standard procedure for many. Email marketing, on the other hand, doesn’t really create the same impression.
In the case of Kmart, an email coupon offer designed for certain markets was instead presented as valid at any Kmart location. The result was confusion and disappointment at the point of sale, with store staff placed in the awkward position of assuming fraud in some cases:
“Cashiers and managers in stores where the coupon was not valid refused to accept the coupons and, in some instances, went so far as to accuse customers of trying to cheat the retailer.”
Had these coupons been electronic rather than paper, store employees may have been less inclined to presume fraud, the accusation of which is more harmful to customer relationships than simply saying “sorry, but that coupon just isn’t valid in our store.” Add in the speed by which unhappy customers can communicate this experience via Twitter and Facebook, and it’s a public relations disaster.
As described here in a recent MobileMarketer.com article, another leading retailer, Sears, has mitigated coupon risk by tying coupon offers to specific customers and particular stores:
“Sears has consistently used SMS to drive cross channel store traffic, with customer specific coupon offers delivered via SMS and redeemable at physical point of sale in stores.”
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