When Check-In Finally Makes Sense To Retailers

The location check-in market has so far followed the manual tap to check-in model. A typical check-in relies on GPS or Wi-Fi signals, which allows people to check-in a store even when they are 300 meters away from it (yes, fake check-ins).

Worst of all, businesses that reward based on check-ins and mayorship could be rewarding the wrong people. Sadly, it also makes manual check-ins data inaccurate and unreliable.

Start-up, Shopkick, however has a different approach towards this whole check-in game.

Instead of relying on GPS or Wi-Fi, Shopkick installs custom hardware in the store that prompts a “check-in” when the Shopkick app is switched on. In other words, you have to be physically in store to receive special offers.

These offers can come in terms of store discounts or/and points, which the Shopkick calls it kickbucks. Kickbucks allows users to redeem gifts like Facebook credits and Napster songs downloads. This way, businesses are rewarding potential consumers, who have at least visited the stores in actual.

So far, Best Buy and Macy’s have signed up for these services and it seems that data insight is the key thing that entices businesses to partner with Shopkick.

“If you know the customer, who they are, when they come in and what they’re doing, you can serve them in a whole new way,” Margita Labhard, director of the new business customer solutions group at Best Buy said.

Thanks to TechCrunch, here’s a video to show you how the app works. It seems pretty smooth and probably has great potential to add in some interactivity to an offline retail store.

[Source: New York Times, TechCrunch]