Location-based shopping app shopkick is welcoming small local stores and coffee shops into its program. The program, which already includes prominent retailers such as Target, Best Buy and Macy's, will install its small shopkick Signal box for free at 1,000 selected stores to enable its walk-in rewards program. The effort is sponsored by Citi, an early investor in the company.
According to an announcement from shopkick, the rewards program will let smaller local businesses with repeat customers, like coffee shops or cafes, provide a loyalty reward program like larger retailers with no out-of-pocket expense.
"We will do for small and medium-sized local stores what we have done for large, national chains: drive foot traffic. It's the single, hardest problem to solve – and the most valuable driver of success – for both retail and service businesses," said Cyriac Roeding, co-founder and CEO of shopkick. "With shopkick, stores also have the potential to increase basket size and margins, improve shopper engagement, and build customer frequency. shopkick's new program will help small and medium businesses in a big way."
The company said a hundred small and medium-sized businesses in three cities have already been involved in a pilot program for the past couple of months.
The shopkick app, combined with the shopkick Signal – an inaudible sound emitted from a device located inside the retailer – verifies a user is in-store and awards “kicks.” This method ensures marketing dollars allocated to the shopkick program are spent on customers actually present in the store, a benefit that is not possible with location-based loyalty applications based on less accurate GPS methods.
The shopkick announcement said its kick rewards are awarded at more than 3 million businesses nationwide, with the highest-value rewards available at the more than 2,500 retail and 160 mall locations in the company’s Retail Partner Network. Reward kicks can be redeemed for items such as in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets and even donations to 30 different causes and charities.
The shopkick app was launched in August 2010 and is now the largest location-based shopping app in the U.S. with 1.8 million users.
