Posts Tagged "Grocery"

It was notable today that on Retailwire.com there was a news item titled, “Whole Foods Goes Mobile.”  It’s not every day that retailers, grocers in particular, announce mobile efforts.  So I was excited to see that a specialty grocery chain familiar to me now had some kind of mobile presence.

The news content appears driven by Whole Foods, and underwhelmingly describes the move this way:

“The site basically provides customers with the features of wholefoodsmarkets.com while on the go.”

I am a huge proponent of targeting customers while “on the go” – we blog about it all the time.  However, it’s equally important to consider how your customers’ on the go experience with your brand can be enhanced by a mobile web presence.  Simply scaling your website to the mobile form factor is a shortsighted strategy that can have negative consequences.  Failing to impress the first time makes it that more difficult to approach mobile consumers in the future.  As well, the expected explosion in mobile browsing by consumers means that it will soon be challenging to stand out among the crowd, just like on the “regular” web.

Much attention is paid to mobile applications for platforms like the iPhone, yet research cited in a recent article titled, “Mobile Internet is 450 million users strong and doubling in four years,” suggests businesses in any segment need to develop a solid mobile web strategy, and soon:

“In October, Gartner reported that smartphones accounted for 14 percent of overall mobile device sales, but would grow to 37 percent by 2012.”

“Gartner forecasts 180 million smartphone sales in 2009, exceeding notebooks for the first time. From 2009, Gartner predicts that consumers would spend more on smartphones than notebooks.”

Bottom line is that millions consumers will be armed with quality mobile web browsing devices and drawn to those sites which offer a valuable experience while “on the go.”  Surely scaling down a website to a small screen is insufficient.  Comments posted on Retailwire.com echo this sentiment:

“Perhaps they could integrate some sort of coupon or loyalty program in the mobile app that will get more people to visit.  ‘Flash the barcode on your phone for a discount’ type of thing.  I suspect the average WF customer has some sort of smart phone or is technologically savvy so marketing this way makes sense.”

“No ‘perhaps’ about it…the mobile site should incorporate coupons, loyalty offerings and other ‘do it now’ type features that are unnecessary on the main site.”

“Whole Foods in particular is challenged in today’s value-oriented world.  The company is losing its cachet, for a variety of reasons. It needs to do more than just sell expensive stuff and expect shoppers to assume high quality.  By making an investment in its customers’ shopping experience, it can re-elevate itself to some extent.”

Today I came across a link on ChiefMarketer.com to a blog post titled “Coupons.com Extends iPhone Grocery App to Loyalty Cards.”  Almost daily, stories are appearing about mobile couponing and loyalty, but this one is unique in how mobile is being stitched into a coupon program strategically and ultimately in line with the customer’s point of view.

Similar to how Interactive Mediums client Newser recently extended its service to mobile via an iPhone application as part of an ongoing mobile channel strategy, Coupons.com is also making progress beyond its initial steps.

Although the notions of replacing loyalty cards with mobile devices and presenting digital coupons or bar codes at the point of sale are very sexy, in practice these face all sorts of challenges – technically and process-wise.  Coupons.com appears to have learned how to overcome them by focusing on the mobile customer experience.

“…integrating digital coupons with loyalty cards is the most practical solution to enabling downloadable discounts in busy stores where consumers often have multiple purchases eligible for discounts.”

“We’ve seen the [couponing] industry flirt with all things of digital format for some time, all the way from the absurd—the notion of presenting barcodes on phones in high-volume checkout lanes—to the legitimate and tested, including digital loading onto loyalty cards.”

With a shopping list iPhone application already under its belt, in taking its mobile strategy to the next level Coupons.com has done the following:

• Offer traditional and mobile optimized websites which allow consumers to register their loyalty cards, browse coupon offers, and elect to have certain offers digitally attached to their accounts so at the point of sale they are redeemed as a group, as opposed to one at a time.
• A revised shopping list application which allows consumers to take photos of product bar codes to automatically have items added to a grocery list.  The application also integrates with the coupon program so that eligible products are flagged for addition to the consumer’s loyalty card account.
• Recognize the difference between coupon redemption associated with multi-product purchases (grocery) versus those associated with one large purchase (restaurant).  To that end, the mobile site allows selected offers to be saved on mobile devices for presentment at checkout without need for a loyalty card or account.

The last point is notable as it recognizes that coupons and offers may not be one in the same, and can have different practical applications:

“Mobile presentment has been a technology looking for a use…Where it works best is in low-volume, high-margin transactions—consumer electronics and things like that– and at the local level. We have over 12,000 offers with restaurants, dry cleaners and professional services, and phone presentment works very well there.”

“It’s all about moving people quickly through those checkout lines…Searching for multiple coupons on your phone, then showing each one, perhaps dropping your phone in the process—those are not conducive to speed.”

What is speeding up is the rate at which mobile marketers are learning from, evolving and improving upon their initial experiences.  Exciting times for mobile marketing.

Today my colleague Jeff Judge passed me this article about the debut of a new multi-touchpoint couponing system designed for use by consumers, retailers and brand managers.  The focus of the solution is around consumers, the way they receive information, and most importantly the way they buy.

Heretofore, my thought process around mobile couponing as an application involved digital renditions of paper coupons represented on a mobile device, which were then scanned at the point of purchase.  Or, more realistically, some collection of mobile coupons represented on a mobile device that are scanned en masse at check out, since that is how shoppers usually redeem coupons.

The beauty of this new offering, however, is that the shopper redeems their coupons as they would a loyalty card discount – they  supply the cashier with their card and coupons are processed as products are scanned.

Participating shoppers now have a digital coupon account associated with their loyalty card, and this couponing bin serves as a repository for offers accepted by shoppers via interactive media such as online banner ads and mobile messages.

Perhaps the real beauty of this solution is that it offers value to both consumers and their suppliers and marketers.  Consumers save time by no longer clipping coupons, while brand managers receive real time data about coupon redemption and retailers gain equally fast insight into shopper behavior.

This is yet another example of data centric value taking hold in the mobile space.  Brand managers can create and execute coupon programs direct to web and mobile much faster without need for the typical print/distribution cycle, accelerating their test/trial efforts toward developing stronger brands, while retailers stand to gain from increased shopping basket value due to better targeted and more effective coupon programs.

For mobile marketers the lesson is apparent; when crafting a program incorporating the mobile channel, take on the viewpoint of your target customer and how they want to interact with you.