Retail Customer Experience: Why Mobile Coupons Are Not the Answer
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from Retail Customer Experience, a daily news portal devoted to helping retailers differentiate the shopping experience.
In a recent article in Fast Company magazine, Steve Jobs quoted Henry Ford: "If I'd have asked people what they wanted, they would've said a faster horse." Mr. Jobs' point was that the iPod, as well as Apple's other game-changing ideas, did not come out of focus groups or quantitative research; they came from understanding human behavior, and finding opportunity there.
There is an apt analogy to the world of coupons.
What people really want, but don't know how to ask for, are ways to save money that are relevant to them. They know about coupons, so they think in those terms.
Coupon use has skyrocketed in the past 24 months or so as shoppers looking for ways to save money returned to their old habits and started clipping coupons. Coupon aggregator websites have fed the trend. With nearly every adult (and many kids) carrying a mobile phone, the transition from paper coupons to mobile began very quickly, for good reason: distribution was, theoretically at least, quick and cheap.
But displaying a coupon barcode on a mobile phone is a ham-fisted way to address this need for value. Coupons have always been a poor way to drive sales, but again, absent a viable alternative, they have hung in there for much longer than their ability to drive incremental sales should have allowed. Putting a coupon barcode on a mobile device does nothing to make the coupon more effective, and only minimally more measurable or targeted.
Thanks to mobile devices, and the smart phone in particular, reaching shoppers in real-time is easier, cheaper, and more effective than ever. The opportunity to engage with shoppers in a meaningful manner, all while driving profitable sales via measurable marketing efforts, far exceeds the paltry returns of mobile coupons. Of course, this is a tougher road to travel, with IT investment required to develop infrastructure and back-end analytics.
Designing and building an affordable car for the masses was, likewise, tougher than breeding a faster horse, but the results have quite literally changed the world. The question of whether a few years from now we will look back on today as a time of transition to more effective marketing tools, or sticking with the old world because it was easier, has yet to be answered.
Discussion Questions: Do you agree that mobile coupons are not the answer? If so, what do you think is the answer?