Last October, media marketing firm Greystripe released a study of working moms who use their iPhones for everything from banking to social networking to making purchases. Dubbed the "iPhone Mom," this
audience segment depends on the iPhone for managing their lives to entertaining their children. Just over half use their iPhones at the supermarket, according to the study.
Of this very active
group, only 19% are downloading coupons, trailing by half those who use it to track their shopping list (41.9%) and those who comparison shop with it (39.4%). This survey was taken late in 2009 when
the economy was even less stable than today; one would expect coupons would be high on the list of activities for dedicated iPhone users.
There is a lesson here for marketers: Using the latest
technology to deliver old-school promotions isn't going to work. Even with the growth of coupons in general over the past couple of years, and the plethora of providers for mobile coupons, this
combination has yet to make any real headway. There are a number of reasons for this lack of engagement from shoppers.
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First, coupons themselves are not the most effective way to drive sales.
Much like lowering prices, they are just another method of temporarily "buying" sales, doing little to drive loyalty. Secondly, there is a more practical concern -- the delivery of the coupon itself.
To date, most mobile coupons place a barcode on the screen of the mobile device.
What happens if I want to redeem three or five of these? Sounds complicated. And the very personal nature of
the typical mobile device (many people keep it next to their bed) makes the idea of handing it over to a stranger to scan unattractive, to say the least. Finally, cashiers probably aren't enamored
with the idea of handling all those phones.
The better option is to think about the "mobile path to purchase," which really begins outside the store. How can marketers help the shopper
accomplish her task in a more effective manner that grows sales and drives loyalty? Instead of coupons, let's go beyond that and look at the possibilities of what this technology can do for the
shopper and the retailer.
The iPhone is a location-aware, hand-sized computer with always-on connectivity, a camera, and the ability to use dedicated applications. This applies to all
smartphones, but we'll stay with the iPhone Mom cohort for now.
Imagine a shopper using her iPhone at home to scan products in her pantry and refrigerator that are in need of replenishment.
She adds them to a basic list of regular "fill-in" items that the mobile device stores inside a dedicated application provided by a retailer. This also ties to her loyalty account and, from there, the
application adds in relevant offers based on her shopping history and complementary items on her list.
The list reorders itself based on the layout of the store she decides to visit, or she
could send the list (and the associated offers) to someone else's phone to shop. Once in the store, she buys those things on her list, and she scans a QR code -- using the built-in scanner in the
retailer application on her mobile device -- to find a good recipe for dinner, and a wine to accompany it. Finally, when checking out, all those offers are automatically credited based on her
purchases through her loyalty account.
All of the technology to accomplish this level of engagement with the shopper exists today, and bringing this vision into reality requires a willingness
to think differently more than anything. The time is now to make the commitments necessary to move beyond coupons and into the 21st century.