Mobile - The Latest Trend in Retail

‘Tis the holiday shopping season and there seem to be promotions/deals/sales everywhere:

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Mobile Tuesday… Wait - Mobile Tuesday?

As reported by Advertising Age, mobile marketers worked on a promotion this past Tuesday to add Mobile Tuesday to the holiday schedule of special buying days. While the specific promotion may not have been as popular as the others, there’s no doubt that 2008 saw many more more efforts to get mobile involved in retail. How?

• Mobile Text Messaging updates - get updates on sales/deals, etc.
• Mobile Websites for Shopping, Info, deals and sometimes purchasing
• iPhone applications for entertainment and shopping
• Mobile barcode scanning for price comparison/purchase (Shopsavvy on Google’s Android Platform is most prominent recent example, see Sarah Perez’s series on ReadWriteWeb and kwiry’s take on 2D barcodes here)

Here are some examples of what different retailers have announced or launched recently regarding mobile:

Amazon

• Text message price comparison
• Text messaging purchasing
• Mobile web site
• iPhone application - See the detailed review at VentureBeat, this app includes option to upload a photo to be manually identified by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk later.

(via Mobile Marketer & VentureBeat)

Target

• iPhone App - The Target Gift Globe mimics the holiday tradition of the snow globe. After downloading it, users shake their iPhone, producing an on-screen snowfall that clears to reveal a gift idea from the retailer. Users can tap through to visit Target’s site and buy the item or find a store nearby.
• On a slightly ironic note, a Target store in Michigan recently achieved mobile infamy for telling a shopper that they couldn’t use a barcode price comparison application (shopsavvy) in the store.

(via Advertising Age)

Gap

• iPhone App - Gap Merry Mix, an application that lets users mix and match clothing. Uses the iPhone’s location technology to find a Gap store nearby. (unfortunately not as easy as it used to be, lots of retailers closing stores to deal with the economic times)

(via Advertising Age)

JC Penny

• Mobile alerts with shopping tips, gift ideas
• WAP site withstore-locator and weather
• Black Friday, Nov. 28 -  JCPenney stores opened at 4 a.m. and shoppers were able to sign up for a wake-up call to their mobile phone.

(via Mobile Marketer)

Sears

• Mobile Website where customers can purchase
• Text message alerts when item is ready for instore pickup
• Text message alerts for deals

(via Mobile Marketer)

In these tough economic times, it’s almost certain that retailers/advertisers/companies will be focusing on all ways to increase engagement with their potential customers in the hopes of selling more goods.  It will be interesting to follow which of these mobile retail efforts takes off and if it benefits all retailers or a select few.  In the meantime, don’t forget to use kwiry to help with your holiday shopping needs and to deal with the rough economy.