the last three feet is the whole nine yards?
This shopper promotion example from Meat Pack, a trainer/shoe store in Guatamala is quite interesting.
The notion of using mobile alerts to deliver coupons or discounts in store has always been riddled with flaws.
Why give real time discounts in store when your customers are already there and possibly ready to buy?
Sure you can potentially increase basket size but it's hard to know whether they might have bought anyway and it's equally hard to contextualise intent.
However delivering a contextual offer when a customer is close to buying with one of your competitors is possibly more interesting.
Meat Pack's 'Hijack' does exactly this.
Hijack tracks a users path round the shopping mall and pings the alert when the customer is in a competitor store that stocks similar products and brands, It starts to get interesting as the app effectively turns on a 'game layer' - the discount offer starts at 100% off and reduces by a percentage point per second as the customers' scarcity bias kicks in and has to leg it to the Meat Pack store to redeem their offer.
While one could argue that in order for the customer to have installed the app they would already be a 'customer' therefore would be inclined to shop with Meat Pack anyway, we should note that even 'loyal' customers are promiscuous - they will be 'loyal' to several brands in any given category - and will still require another prod. While the real point of the intervention is to create a situation which will capture momentary attention of other 'spectators'.
We're almost always more interested in what we see others to be doing.
As more and more of the key challenges for FMCG type brands are taking place in what some commentators describe as the 'zero' moment of truth, we'll see more of these promotions that join-up the physical and the digital and look to activate those system one type responses.
In effect, turning the last three feet into (almost) the whole nine yards.
HT Econsultancy
