Taco Bell hopes to cook up sales from health-conscious consumers with a new user-friendly ingredients list and nutrition calculator, which will be available on the chain's mobile and Web sites, as more fast-food chains aim to spread the word on mobile about their transparency initiatives and naturally flavored menu items. As the brand announces its goal of removing all artificial colors and flavors from its menu line-up by the end of the year, it is ensuring that consumers on mobile platforms are aware of this news and can easily access any ingredient information. This tactic may help Taco Bell drive …

Mobile games have proven to be quite rewarding for Disney. The company has reported that it has established a strong revenue stream in licensing Marvel property tomobile game developers. Companies like Kabam have used their licenses to produce games that have become resoundingly popular among consumers. Due to the success of these mobile games, Disney is likely to continue placing emphasis on the mobile sector in order to find greater degrees of success. Kabam found significant success with its Marvel Contest of Champions game, an arcade fighter that has established a massive following. According to estimates from Thinkgaming, the game …

Target CEO Brian Cornell confirmed at the Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California that the company plans to offer in-store support for Apple Pay but the company is first focusing on implementation of chip and PIN payments systems. Though Target was the first retailer to adopt Apple for in-app purchases, the retailer has held off implementing the payment system in stores because it’s a “major undertaking.” As stated in Apple Insider, Brian Cornell said, “I’d love to have Apple Pay today,” and added, “Target will be open-minded about other payment platforms once the POS systems are operational.” Target is especially eager …

At its “Commerce: Rewired” event in San Francisco, PayPal CEO Dan Schulman announced a new move ahead for the payment giant. Schulman stated his belief that we will see a continuing change in the financial services industry in the next three to five years, much like in the previous two decades. The future change, he says is to be driven by the two main factors: the mass mobile adoption and increasingly blurred lines between online and offline commerce.

Peer-to-peer review site Yelp is taking its service into commerce with the development of its shopping platform and partnership with digital commerce Web site Shoptiques, allowing users to shop local boutiques in their area through the application. The shopping feature displays local shopping boutiques in the user’s area and gives her the option to shop the merchandise in the Yelp app, allowing the review service to get a piece of the action it has long been helping local businesses receive. The app aggregates local businesses in the area of the user paired with ratings, giving consumers an option to make …

Out-of-home (OOH) media are particularly effective in reaching smartphone users shortly before they engage in activities such as mobile shopping, mobile search, and mobile social networking. These findings emerged from a study by the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) which saw 1,837 smartphone users aged 18-64 record, via a smartphone eDiary, their location, mode of transport, media activity, purchase behaviour and emotional context every half hour over a seven-day period. These efforts revealed that OOH media typically reached panellists in the hour prior to 43% of mobile shopping activity, ahead of TV (27%), AM/FM radio (12%) and print newspapers (3%).

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven is ramping up its mobile loyalty platform abroad by rolling out handheld QuickScan devices in Philippines bricks-and-mortar locations to read bar codes on consumers’ smartphones and enable them to redeem their rewards more quickly, pointing to mobile loyalty’s important role for food and beverage marketers. The brand’s regional affiliate, Philippine Seven Corp., is deploying the scanners across 1,300 stores in the Asian country. 7-Eleven’s strategy of offering rewards to frequent shoppers ensures that sales stay up and in-store traffic remains consistent, and is a tactic that many other food and beverage marketers are also leveraging to …

It’s no secret that millennials are among the most avid consumers of video games. For video game retailer GameStop Corp., engaging millennials in a way that satisfies their needs and promotes loyalty is absolutely essential. “Generations and the differences between them are important to GameStop,” Mike Hogan, executive VP of strategic business and brand development at GameStop, told Chain Store Age. “Millennials have been important to us for a long time and are now our single largest customer group.” While Hogan stressed that GameStop treats every customer as an individual, the retailer also considers generational preferences when providing a tailored omnichannel customer …

Ford announced today that its GoDrive car-sharing service is now opening up to the public to make 50 vehicles available at 20 locations across London. Initially launched in closed beta with around 100 people and called City Driving On-Demand, the service is now looking to open up to 2,000 members to share those 50 vehicles. “As cities become more and more congested, people are becoming increasingly open to new means of mobility, and car sharing is proving to be an appealing model,” says Ken Washington, Vice President of Ford Research and Advanced Engineering. “A crucial part of delivering effective car-sharing services is to learn alongside these …

The retailer has partnered with mobile marketing firm Weve to target commuters and tourists as they pass by its new concept store in Villiers Street in Central London. Tesco used Weve to identify a total of 40,000 shoppers who had either walked past the store six times over a two-week period, or else had walked in and out of Embankment tube station. The team then pushed out a coupon to these consumers’ smartphones, offering £1 off a £3 food-to-go shop. Shoppers could then redeem the coupon by scanning it with their food at a self-service till. The idea was to …