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Shopkick and Causeworld
The folks who started the non-profit Causeworld wanted to find a way to raise money for charitable causes. So they put together a mobile app that provided a way to “bring the physical and virtual worlds of retail together. Causeworld is a mobile app by the makers of Shopkick which lets users check-in to stores to earn money to be used for donations.
Causeworld is a similar check-in application where users can only give their points to nonprofits. When Causeworld users went to the new for-profit version, Shopkick, the community grew to almost four times the size of Causeworld, and a sizable part of the users still decided to give their rewards to charities. Though a smaller percentage currently donate, the massive growth in users means that a greater number donate, making the aggregate contribution more charitable than under CauseWorld.
Shopkick is a good example of how the for-profit industry can sometimes make a greater social impact than the nonprofit world. Shopkick has created a more charitable community since it decided to ditch its charity business model and focus on giving users rewards with virtual currency for completing various check-in tasks at selected retailers, which can then be exchanged for products or used to give equivalently to a charity.
Here a few numbers on to compare CauseWorld to ShopKick in july 2011:
A carbon offsetting project:
- CauseWorld: 2,133 donations per month
- Shopkick: 2,673 donations per month
A charity to prevent child abuse:
- CauseWorld: 667 donations per month
- Shopkick: 1,257 donations per month
A breast cancer charity:
- CauseWorld: 533 donations per month
- Shopkick: 964 donations per month
Shopkick is one of the company that proves that combining charity and profit is more beneficial to all involved. Thanks to Shopkick, some charities received double the number of monthly donations.
However, Shopkick is forbidden from disclosing actual donation numbers, so there is no way to verify if the total dollar amount going to charity has increased but we know that users are giving more often.
Sources : http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/07/shopkick-spoonful-profit-helps-charity/
Shopkick Ban
It’s official! I’m BANNED.!!!
I have read articles and visited plenty of sites that talk about Shopkick cheats. I decided to do an experiment to see how long it would take for the app to realize that I’m using cheats. But of course I’m not going to put my account at risk for this, I decided to try this on my girlfriend’s iPhone. There are many ways to cheat the app and the following are just the ones I have heard:
- Scan the barcodes (UPC or QR code) online without actually going to the store.
- Record the inaudible sound that is played at store entrances for recognizing walk-ins
- GPS hack to allow the user to search more stores
I decided to use the first method to see how long it would take for me to get caught and what would happen if I do get banned. I did a simple google search for sites that have images of the barcodes for the products available to scan at the participating stores. I found a site where the barcodes are most up-to-date. With this, I started scanning the barcodes daily. It was extremely easy to gather the kicks as the barcodes are still images that can be captured by the camera steadily. Using this method, I was able to collect roughly about 200 kicks a day. However, the judgement date finally came for me on the 9th day where I received a big red notice right when I launched the app. Also, another error message was given when I try to use my kicks to redeem for rewards.
On Shopkick’s Facebook page, I found that many Shopkick users are complaining for getting banned for no apparent reason and getting no respond when they emailed this problem in. One of administrators for the page made the following comment: “Hi all- We do not ban users for redeeming rewards. If you were banned and not scanning barcodes from a website send us an email at support@shopkick.com. Thanks!-shopkick Cat.” I decided to send in an email to see if they would actually reinstate my account with no questions asked. For the moment, I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for some good news from Shopkick.
Shopkick Key Figures in April 2012
As of April, shopkick.com is 5 Years, 5 Months, 23 Days old
- IP address is 174.143.154.94
- Located at San Antonio, Texas, United States
- SEO score of 73.9%
- Shopkick value $8,731.00
- Ranked #82,575 on the world wide web (the lower the rank, the popular the website is)
- Average page load time to be 0.644 seconds (88% of sites are slower)
- PageRank of 6/10
- Alexa Traffic Global Rank: 98 487
- Shopkick growth:
- 18,093 unique visitors per day which produce a total of 39,805 page-views
- Time on site : between 2 and 3 minutes
- Google indexed 238 pages, Yahoo indexed 220 pages and Bing indexed 183 pages
- Shopkick regional traffic ranks:
- United-States: 37 128
- Turkey: 66 433
- United Kingdom: 85 541
- Audience demographics:
- Android app store
- Installs: 1 to 5 million
- Ratings: 55,202 (Average rating = 4.4/5)
- iTunes app store
- Ratings: 27953 (Average rating = 3/5)
Shopkick vs. Checkpoints for Users and Stores
Shopkick and Checkpoints are both apps that give customers rewards for interacting with products. But what are the differences and similarities and which one is better?
First let’s talk about what both apps have in common: Both apps have a system that allows customers to gather credits and redeem those for rewards. The purpose of both apps is identical accordingly: direct the customer’s attention to certain products and bring customers into the store. Therefore, both shopkick and Checkpoints give you credits for scanning product barcodes. That’s how far the similarities go.
How are they different?
In many other regards, shopkick and Checkpoints are very different. The focus of shopkick seems to be more on the in-store experience, whereas Checkpoints’ focus seems to be more on the user as a consumer in general. Checkpoints for example gives coins to users for a broad variety of things. You can get coins for downloading suggested apps, scanning items at home, liking the app on Facebook, or searching on yahoo. Moreover, Checkpoints has 2 games integrated that allow to gamble for coins. However, the amount of coins that can be earned for this kind of activities are relatively small and normally around 1 or 2 coins. This number is relatively low considering that a $1 gift card for Home Depot costs 300 coins.
Why is shopkick better for customers?
Shopkick on the other hand, does not over those low credit activities. Instead you can get kicks for walking into a store. Shopkick has an electronic device installed in each participating store’s entrance area that sends out an inaudible sound signal. This signal is recorded by the shopkick app. That allows shopkick to register when a customer is walking into a store. The amount of kicks you get for a walk in are relatively high and range between 50 and 200. This seems to be more attractive to customers, especially because the value of 1 kick is comparable, even slightly higher, than 1 coin: a 2$ gift card for Best Buy costs 500 kicks. That means 250 shopkick kicks are worth $1 compared to 300 Checkpoints coins for $1. In other words, you might have to download 150 apps to get a $1 gift card from Checkpoints, but you might only need to walk into 3 stores in order to get a $2 gift card from shopkick.
Why is shopkick better for stores?
The desire for a Checkpoint user to walk into a store is much lower than the desire for a shopkick user. A shopkick user gets large amounts of kicks for walking into the store, a Checkpoint user doesn’t. This is very important for stores. The shopping conversion rate for retail stores can be as high as 50%. That means, that every other customer that walks into a store actually buys something. Even customers that entered the store only for getting kicks and that had no initial intention to buy anything, might find something they need once they entered the store.
Concluding, the benefits for users as well as for participating stores seem to be higher for shopkick than for Checkpoints. This is mostly due to the thousands of audio signaling devices that shopkick has installed in participating stores. In regard to the competition, this investments seems to pay out for shopkick the users and the stores.
Here a Kick, There a Kick, Everywhere a shopkick
Where’s your next good kick coming from?
There are numerous large retailers around the country that offer kicks at their many store locations and smaller businesses are starting to partner with shopkick as well, further increasing the joy of shopping. Kicks can mostly be retrieved from big name retailers like Target and Best Buy, but recently shopkick has begun to venture into new purchasing environments such as Visa credit cards, ExxonMobil gas stations, and the CW television channel. So where will shopkick venture to next…
I believe that shopkick holds a wonderful opportunity for grocery stores. Although many grocery store chains offer their own loyalty programs, shopkick would provide an opportunity to move away from mailed advertisements, coupons, & points toward being able to reach consumers where through the device that never leaves their side: their smartphones. We will later explore the opportunities, hurdles, and benefits of this potential future shopkick partner as well as a few others.
We would like to hear from your perspective as consumers, where would you want to be able to acquire kicks from?
Please leave a comment with your suggestions for future shopkick partner companies.
Local Businesses Can Take Advantage of Shopkick Too
By definition, Shopkick is a mobile loyalty platform that rewards customers for shopping at participating stores. Therefore, this is a good opportunity for small-business owners established in 10 major cities, which include New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Washington, D.C., Detroit and New Orleans, to boost foot traffic and encourage current customers to visit more frequently. However, Shopkick main interesting partners are mainly coffee shops, bakeries, restaurants and local clothing. Once a small business has been selected, Shopkick will handle the installation of its in-store signaling hardware and monitor the activity of participating users. Local merchants can sit back and relax, without having to worry about rotating special deals or tracking how many customers have checked-in. Merchants are expected to pay less than $100 for Shopkick’s in-store tracking hardware, along with a commission fee based on the points their customers earn and the number of transactions completed by shoppers with the app. Moreover, the big name partner companies, such as American Eagle and Best Buy, make the application successful {how do they make the app successful, or maybe you mean a different word than successful(maybe popular/well known)}. Therefore, local merchants don’t need to invest money in promoting the app or educating customers on how to use it.
Shopkick has eliminated the manual check-in that makes it easier for shoppers to participate in loyalty programs and earn points. Merchants are given plenty of latitude in creating the rewards and incentives they offer to Shopkick users, as well as the activities and tasks that customers can complete to earn points. At Sports Authority, for example, customers will often receive extra points for interacting with selected in-store displays and scanning barcodes on merchandise that the retailer is currently promoting. Smaller businesses that can’t afford to give away gift cards and 50 percent-off coupons can get creative with the incentives they offer. Coffee shops and bakeries can give away free cups of coffee or muffins. Clothing stores and other local retailers can reward Shopkick customers with sneak peaks of their latest merchandise and first-access to exclusive sales.
Source:
Shopkick 