Can Restaurants Join the Fun?

YES, the shopkick model can be applied to consumers’ restaurant experience!

We have recently seen shopkick start to move away from traditional retail stores to different businesses, including gas stations and Visa cards.  But who is shopkick going to partner with next?  Well, we believe that shopkick has great opportunities in the restaurant industry. Restaurants have yet to fully embraced mobile marketing and thus have an opportunity in this trend. Here we take a look at a large American restaurant chain and developed a marketing plan utilizing shopkick. Let’s use BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse as an example.

Obviously, kicks cold be offered for walk-ins, but what about the opportunity to scan products that are sold? Without much investment, BJ’s could include QR codes or barcodes on their menu and offer kicks for specific food items depending on what plates they want to drive attention towards.

Another benefit to using shopkick is that the restaurant could try to control the traffic during different days and different times of the day. By offering a large amount of kicks for walk-ins during a specific time-frame, such as happy hour or typically slow times of the day or week.

Kicks could also be offered for purchasing certain items, such as appetizers, desserts, entrees, drinks, etc. After purchasing the specified food or beverage items, a QR code could be printed out on the customers’ receipt which could be scanned for even more kicks. This also should not pose much additional cost to introduce this process.

Ultimately, shopkick can be used by various types of businesses in order to bring awareness to brands and products. Shopkick facilitates the building of relationships between brands and consumers. This is done by engaging customers and having them interact with brands and products.

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.

How to Become a Shopkick Partnered Company

Thinking of adding shopkick to your marketing campaign?  The good news is that any local business could be selected as a partnered company by shopkick and Citi after completing the application process.  However, there are a few key factors that are considered in the selection of a new partner.

First, where are you located?  Shopkick mostly operates in the areas surrounding large American cities including New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Washington D.C., Detroit, and New Orleans.  Second, what’s your business?  Shopkick prefers to work with certain types of businesses that work well with their business model.  They are currently looking for coffee shops, yogurt shops, bakeries, family restaurants, and fashion stores.  Many other factors are taken into consideration in the shopkick partner company selection process, such as your Yelp rating and number of store locations, to make sure that your company and shopkick are a good fit.

Maximize Returns by Maximizing Shopkick

Three Tips to Help You Get the Most Bang for Your Buck!

 

Shopkick is a creative and interesting tool that many companies use as part of their marketing strategy.  However, partnered companies need to create a sound infrastructure to facilitate the effective use of shopkick by consumers in their stores.  If you are thinking of becoming or already are one of shopkick’s partners, here are a few tips to help you get the most bang for your buck:

What is Shopkick?

If you have yet to hear about Shopkick, let me enlighten you.  Shopkick is an smartphone app that brings consumers and companies together in a different way than we usually experience, by facilitating the building of positive relationships between consumers and companies. This app creates an opportunity for shoppers to earn points or ‘kicks’ that can later be redeemed for prizes.  The goal of Shopkick is to make the shopping experience more enjoyable, and currently has over 3 million active users since its introduction in August 2010.

What companies are involved?

Shopkick has partnered with many companies and the list continues to grow.  Shopkick is being used in over 4,000 stores and by numerous product brands.  Here are just a few of the companies that Shopkick has partnered with that you may have heard of before:

Target                         Macy’s                       Best Buy                     Sports Authority

ToysRUs                     Simon Halls                Exxon Mobil                 West Elm

Wet Seal                    Old Navy                    Crate&Barrel                American Eagle Outfitters

How does it work?

After downloading the free Shopkick app, users open the app and start earning kicks the moment they walk into a partnered store.  Shopkickers can also rack up kicks by scanning or buying specific items.   Additionally, the app provides information on special offers and discounts available at nearby stores.

Why people use it?

Consumers use Shopkick as a source of entertainment while running errands and of rewards in the form of kicks which can be used towards gift cards.  Shopkickers can access the app for free and costs them little excess energy to participate.  This allows users to get ‘paid’ to interact with stores and brands in a fun way, which increases consumers’ positive experience.

This is also why companies utilize Shopkick; this social media tool connects consumers to companies/brands and creates a motivation for users to increase their awareness of and interaction with these brands.  Companies have the opportunity to utilize Shopkick to directly influence users’ shopping behavior, and the behavior of Shopkickers’ friends and family by word-of-mouth, e.g. via Facebook or Twitter.  For companies, Shopkick offers opportunities in social media marketing in an increasingly social market.

Sources:

www.shopkick.com

http://www.bizjournals.com/prnewswire/press_releases/2012/01/24/SF40587