Has the internet changed the nature of the way shopping occurs in stores these days? more
Facebook Places, Foursquare and just about every Social Networking seems to be focusing on location these days. But the problem is they all rely on some sort of check-in, whether it be manual check-in by the user or using the latest GPS/Geo-fencing based check-in.
If it hasn’t already happened – the days of the Paper Coupon are numbered.
Grocery chains, food and drug manufacturers, and even coupon marketers themselves are going electronic. Part of the problem is that newspaper readership is declining, so fewer people are looking at the Sunday circulars. Shoppers young and old that are sought by marketers read most of their news online now. And fewer people these days have time to clip, organize and sort coupons each week.
The electronic version is almost as simple as a pair of scissors and the Sunday paper. You visit a Website, type in your loyalty codes, and find all the coupons waiting for you, electronically, at a store's cash register or on your cell phone. Better yet entire sites are devoted to collecting and disseminating promo codes for online shopping giving you the benefit in that medium as well. And even more innovation in this space is happening with 2D barcodes that you can email around therefore they can be delivered and used at the point of purchase.
But what is missing is the way to recognize the presence of your best customer. All the tactics above give you new and untargeted ways to spam your customers with promotional coupons without the paper hassle. But is that really what your customer wants?
I would argue that they want a better richer customer experience in the store. One that would recognize my presence then deliver a very targeted grouping of highlighted offers to me (this is what we call presence marketing). Even better is if those offers could also be recommended or vetted by my social graph (say Facebook) where I would know that 2 of my friends from Facebook also bought that item based on the same offer.
I am of the opinion this vision is not far off. In the coming months you will begin to see more and more of presence and location based services that can deliver this type of result making the Paper Coupons appear to be headed the way of the Betamax.
