ShopLocal Launches It’s First iPhone Application For The Kohl’s Weekly Ad

Posted on 2 November 2009 by Patrick Flanagan No Comments

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The wait is over.  The Kohl’s Weekly Ad & Store Finder iPhone / iPod Touch application is now live within the Apple iTunes App Store.  The ShopLocal team has been working on this for months and it’s great to finally get this live for the general public (thanks Apple for working the weekend and pushing this live last Saturday 10/31).

The team is also excited to see that a good chunk of people have already downloaded the app, given that no promotion has occurred yet, including a few outside of the U.S. (not sure why though?).  It will be fun to see this app’s download footprint grow in the coming days, especial within the crowded Lifestyles iTunes app category.  It’s one of those things that you really don’t exactly know how your baby (um, I mean app) will be received by the world.

It’s a free download so please download and check it out.  Tell us what you think by leaving feedback within iTunes or rating the app there as well.

Available now, the free Kohl's Weekly Ad & Store Finder application

Within this iPhone app, there are four main features and content views which are browse by:

• Weekly Ad Page: Users can browse through all the active weekly ads for their current store location and then can select a specific promotion to view all of the circular pages one at a time
• Brands: App users can filter all of the current on sale deals by a specific brand such as Nike or Dockers
• Categories (called Offers in the app): Allows consumers to select a specific category of interest such as Girl’s Shoes and to only view those applicable deals that are live right now for their current store location
• Nearby Kohl’s Store Locations: Shoppers can use their current location to pull up a list of Kohl’s stores that are close by, as well as directly call the local store  or view the store’s location within a Google map

Here is a collage of many of the different views and slices of weekly ad content that is exposed by this native iPhone app that is built around the best local deals that are available at local Kohl's stores across the U.S.

What Channels Are Different Types Of Multichannel Shoppers Using And Why?

Posted on 19 October 2009 by Patrick Flanagan 1 Comment

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Masha Sajdeh of Arc Worldwide presented a great piece of brand new multichannel research at the In-Store Marketing Expo that took place here in Chicago last week. This studies methodology and sample was a solid:

• 3 countries
• 5,609 respondents
• 60 minute online survey
• 20 categories of products examined
• 10 unique channels probed

The entire Arc multichannel study is worth a careful read, but due to it’s length (57 pages) we’ll only examine a few portions that pertain to better understand which channel different types of multichannel shoppers are using and why.

For those not familuar with the concept of what multichannel shopping is all about, this is a great visual explanation.

So first let’s examine a few of the insights uncovered around how much time different multichannel shoppers spend per channel on a monthly basis.  Surprisingly, the circular is the channel that showed the highest usage across all of the different types of mutlichannel shoppers (excluding a retailer’s own web site and store).

Note how the circular across all types of multichannel shoppers plays a critical role in adding the shopping process.

If we take a closer look at just the medium and heavy mutlichannel shoppers, the picture becomes even more stark. A retailer’s own web site and physical store are used heavily and fairly equally by both types.  However the usage pattern around circulars is very different with heavy multichannel shoppers (arguable the most desirable and profitable type of shopper) using the circulars 95% of the time, which is higher than the retailer’s own web site.  Even the more moderate mutlichannel shoppers are using the circulars at pretty hefty rates of 61%, which when again compared to a retailer’s own web site usage of 69% clearly demonstrates the continued importance of the circular to multichannel shoppers.

Wow, circulars are nearly as used by heavy multichannel shoppers as a retailers own physical stores!

Finally let’s try to get to the bottom of the ‘why’ – in this case, the ‘why’ is what causes these multichannel shoppers to use which channel when.  Not surprising, circulars are all about saving money.  Catalogs on the other hand are all about providing shoppers with inspiration.

Every single channel has a unique use and value proposition to a multichannel shopper.