Retailers Discover Useful In-Store Apps Keep Shoppers from Escaping
Major brick-and-mortar retailers are fighting mobile apps that push consumers online, enhancing their own mobile apps with in-store assistance.
Major brick-and-mortar retailers are fighting mobile apps that push consumers online, enhancing their own mobile apps with in-store assistance.
The problem, according to a panel at the GigaOM Mobilize conference in San Francisco, is that brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy, Target and others risk becoming physical showcases for goods later purchased online. RedLaser, ShopSavvy, Google Shopper, and others encourage shoppers to enter a store, examine a potential purchase like a TV, compare it with others - then search for a better price online.
Companies like the Gap, Target, and others began launching apps years ago to try and suggest gifts to shoppers. In 2008, for example, Gap's first iPhone app pushed its holiday commercial videos and offered a game to try different hats and scarves on models, then allowed the user to buy them.
Today, those same retailers are offering apps that are designed to keep consumers in the store - or, if they have to go online, on the retailer's Web site. Target's app, for example, offers a barcode scanner that replaces the docked scanners at many of its stores, offering the ability to check prices on items that might not be clearly marked. (And Shopkick, another shopping app, rewards customers for physically entering a store.)
Best Buy offers comparative information for models it stocks, stored rewards cards, and other capabilities. Retailing giant Walmart allows users to check inventory, and executives suggested some additional enhancements.
Most people visit Walmart for a one-stop shopping experience, said Paul Cousineau, vice president of mobile products at Walmart Global eCommerce. But what happens when they're confronted with 200,000 square feet of shopping space? "They get lost," he said.
In the future, Walmart could make that more efficient, perhaps by providing an internal map of the store.
The idea is to empower what Benjamin Hedrington, the senior director of Web strategy for emerging platforms at Best Buy, called the "shared self-serve vision". Previously, users felt that the research process was disconnected from the in-store experience, he said, where users researched what they wanted to buy, then came in the store to physically test the item and compare it to others.
Cousineau, however, said that the Walmart app takes a page from other comparison apps. "We hope that a consumer walks into another retailer's store, and they can see what the price is at Walmart and have them come to our store," he said.
Empowering the customer with apps also allows the giant retailer, already criticized for its labor practices, to cut down on store employees. "We think that [the apps] may allow us to have less staff," Cousineau said.
"That's one of the differences between Best Buy and Walmart," Hedrington said. "We think we can augment [our staff]. I don't think that there will be less of them."
"Buying a TV and buying groceries are two different experiences," Cousineau returned.