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August 23, 2024
Is 7-Eleven’s New Regional App Something Other Retailers Should Try?
7-Eleven Hawaiʻi has launched a new mobile app designed to enhance customer convenience and engagement, though it is currently available only at the 67 stores across Oʻahu, Maui, Kauaʻi, and Hawaiʻi Island. The app features mobile checkout, the 7Rewards loyalty program, and a new 7NOW service for pickup and delivery.
Users earn points through 7Rewards, with a 500-point bonus for first-time app users. The 7NOW service allows customers to order popular items like Spam Musubi and bento meals for pickup or delivery. Greg Hanna, CEO of 7-Eleven Hawaiʻi, stated in the company’s press release that the app aims to offer faster, more convenient shopping and exclusive benefits for local customers.
“The 7NOW feature allows them to access our products with just a few taps, while mobile checkout lets them skip the line for a faster and more convenient shopping experience,” Hanna explained. “This launch is a major step in our commitment to serving our Hawaiʻi communities with quality and convenience.”
It appears the retailer covered all the required bases of this region by providing everything a retail app should: loyalty/rewards, delivery services, and mobile checkout.
The reason this app is not available in the United States as a whole (and why promotions can’t cross over between them) is that in 1989, “7-Eleven Hawai‘i, Inc. [became] a locally operated company under the direction of 7-Eleven Japan,” according to its official 7-Eleven timeline.
As previously discussed, mobile commerce is quickly becoming an essential platform that is reshaping the retail landscape. Even with this foreknowledge, according to Digital Commerce 360’s database, not all retailers are selling through their mobile apps — even some from the e-commerce research company’s 2024 Top 1,000 Report, which ranks retailers in North America based on annual web sales.
Per Digital Commerce 360, “For retailers who had their own mobile apps, their median rank in the Top 1,000 Database was 209. Compare that with the median rank of retailers without apps, which was 584. In other words, retailers with their own mobile apps sold more online — on average — which in turn helped them rank higher in the database.”
MoEngage, a customer engagement platform, recently named seven retailers that have successfully created apps with “distinct niches in the app space because they focused on the primary benefit they could provide to their particular users.” The company noted that others have also “mastered the mobile user experience,” but these specific retailers used different approaches that are tailored to meet their consumers’ demands:
- Overstock: Known for its AR app that allows users to visualize furniture in their homes and pay with Google Pay.
- IKEA: Offers the IKEA Place app, which uses AR to show how furniture fits and looks in a room, including texture and lighting details.
- Starbucks: Provides an app for quick ordering, payment, and tipping that can also identify store music and add the songs to a Spotify playlist.
- Walgreens: Features an app that simplifies prescription refills, reminds users of refill needs, and includes a Pill Reminder feature.
- Home Depot: Enhances in-store shopping with an app that helps locate products, provides QR and barcode information, and allows access to reviews.
- Sephora: Uses its app for virtual makeovers, easy online shopping, and in-store enhancements like scanning for reviews and how-to videos.
- Oasis: Integrates its e-commerce site, mobile app, and physical stores, allowing sales associates to provide on-the-spot product information and manage stock orders directly.
Another example is how Zara’s app offers a sleek, user-friendly experience with features like Store Mode, which shows only in-store available items and allows for quick pickup with QR codes. The Click & Find feature helps locate items and check basket availability, while Click & Try lets users reserve fitting rooms and receive notifications when ready. Digital receipts are stored in the app, streamlining returns and reducing paper waste.
According to Grocery Dive, regional grocers can utilize their deep understanding of their more localized and concentrated customer bases to tailor their apps to meet shopper preferences, helping them stand out. By offering features that surpass those of their competitors, regional grocers can provide a more seamless digital shopping experience. “Even details as slight as the presentation and layout of the app can make a difference,” the outlet noted.
The new 7-Eleven Hawaiʻi app represents a step forward in enhancing the customer experience, though only for those who live in Hawaiʻi. Its launch is notable within the local market, leveraging convenience and tailored benefits for island residents.
Discussion Questions
Should retailers start considering having apps for local markets?
How does the 7-Eleven Hawai’i app measure up against its counterparts on the mainland and internationally?
Does it set a new benchmark for app performance and customer engagement, or does it merely do the bare minimum for its market?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Rachelle King
Retail Industry Thought Leader
Richard Hernandez
Merchant Director
Shep Hyken
Chief Amazement Officer, Shepard Presentations, LLC
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It makes a lot of sense to have one multi-functional app which allows customers to undertake a variety of tasks. The mobile checkout is particularly useful as it will make grab and go missions much more efficient; this is an important area of business for 7-Eleven. The integration of the rewards program is also savvy, especially as 7-Eleven in Hawaiʻi is partly competing with Foodland and its popular Maikaʻi loyalty program. As for the regional angle, I think it’s interesting, but it should be remembered that Hawaiʻi is very much its own separate retail ecosystem with no ‘border’ considerations.
NB: Please sort your ʻokinas out! They’re not apostrophes!
Hawaiian diacritical marks, ʻokina (ʻ) and kahakō (macron) are not just symbols but essential components of the Hawaiian language. The ʻokina represents a glottal stop, a pause in speech, and is typographically represented as a reversed apostrophe.
It’s not everyday RW serves up cultural enrichment! 🙂
Indeed! The ʻokina is technically a letter in the Hawaiian alphabet.
How does it measure up? Well, what is it supposed to do? Refill prescriptions? No. Visualize a furniture layout? No. Navigate the store? No. Pre-order?
Probably not.Perhaps In short, it may have value, but I find the idea less compelling than with the retailers listed. Tho I may be wrong, I picture a Board meeting where someone said “everyone else offers an app, we should too!”I’m with you, Craig Sundstrom, I’m all for creating a better customer experience for a local market, but how is the app doing that? What am I missing? 7/ll is already a convenience store how is it improving engagement?
I have been in Board meetings as you describe. Fortunately, these remarks don’t seem to go anywhere.
The 711 Regional app is functional, but it lacks uniqueness, as many retailers already offer similar app services. If the real question is whether other convenience stores should implement comparable solutions, the answer is a resounding yes.
These apps enhance the shopping experience for convenience store customers while also allowing C-store chains to collect valuable data on customer preferences and behaviors.
Significant advancements have been made since convenience stores first served their original purpose. Db
While this custom regional app is inspired more by organizational structure than to set the Hawaiian market apart from other markets, it’s still an excellent way to build loyalty with Hawaiian consumers, in a way that resonates with this market.
A big benefit of this new app is the customization of the local food menu for ordering. Too often, national apps fail to accommodate local market difference in pricing, menu or general availability. This feature alone in the Hawaiian 7-Eleven app is a boost to consumers who know what the local stores have and will have no trouble replicating the instore experience through the app. In turn, boosting customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Certainly, the larger the store or chain, the larger the complexity in designing apps. Even some stores within the same zip code may have different inventory often due to store size or footprint. The alternative has been for some retailers to require customers to shop by store through their apps. Which, still does not fully address the gaps in assortment.
The continued rise in mobile commerce is going to require more attention to user experience. Not just the user interface but truly where mobile becomes an end-to-end platform that can deliver a positive user experience.
Mobile first has been the design standard for sometime now. Perhaps now is the time to start thinking consumer first.
I love Spam Musubi and bento boxes. It is a regional differentiator and brings a uniqueness to using the app.
That regional differentiator can be used in other retailers to be unique in their competitive areas, Yes, retailers have loyalty apps, but this is unique and makes them stand out. There is merit to its use.
Multiple local apps only contribute to the onscreen “noise” that users are truly tired of wading through. Integrating these without going to regional or local, allows companies focus their messages and boost reach while avoiding the fragmentation that local apps include. More is not better.
Having a regional app may sound appealing to get at local customization. However, it just makes things more complicated for shoppers who now need to figure out which app they should install and where to use it.
I like to use the concept of “Doing local well.” For example, you can’t buy a snow shovel at a hardware store in Miami, FL, but there are plenty to buy in Minnesota! So, why should an app be any different? Localize it to the country and city. That is probably easier than it sounds, but with today’s technology capabilities, it shouldn’t be too, too difficult to program.
The launch of the 7-Eleven mobile app is a testament to the growing importance of localized, customer-focused digital experiences in physical retail settings. It’s a great example of how understanding and catering to regional needs can create a better customer experience. Focusing on these personalized digital solutions is key to building stronger connections and encouraging customers to keep coming back.
Good on 7-11 Hawai’i in attempting to get closer to customers and their needs. A national one-size-fits-all strategy of product, styles/variety and promotions is a necessary foundation, but customer love and loyalty is at peak when the local connections are authentic, genuine.
A key strategy in having an app is so customers can accomplish something they couldn’t while shopping in the store. Sure, the retailer loves seeing customer data, but what is the real value proposition for the 7-11 Hawai’i customer? Is it saving time? Access to products and deals no one else gets? For 7-11, creating a moat around offers on local products could be an opportunity.
Retailers that operate in multiple regions should look to build one app that’s regionally aware, showing locally relevant selection, stock and sales. This tech is an investment and so needs to be optimized for a retailer while providing value to the customer. Individual apps per region are cumbersome and error prone to operate.
For this specific app, it’ll be critical to monitor the impact it has to basket size and if it drives down impulse purchases like snacks, a hallmark of the convenience store industry.
Seven Eleven had to do a regional app because it is a separate subsidiary. Other than legal reason I don’t see why retailers would want to develop multiple applications that are region specific instead of the main app that offers different features and content is customized by region. Am I missing something here?