Source: Target
Target continues tinkering with its Cartwheel mobile app. In the spring, the company announced it would test letting customers clip and redeem digital coupons using the app. Now comes reports the retailer is testing a rewards program known as “Cartwheel Perks” that gives customers who use the app the opportunity to earn credit toward purchases or free items such as athletic apparel and laundry detergent.
Target is testing the concept at 126 stores in four markets — Denver, Houston, San Diego and St. Louis — with plans to expand the program should it prove successful. The chain begins the test following a quarter in which comparable store sales declined 2.2 percent on reduced customer traffic.
Cartwheel has certainly resonated with Target customers since the retailer first launched the app in 2013 via its own Facebook page. Since then, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports, 27 million users have signed up saved a collective $600 million on purchases.
Eddie Baeb, a spokesperson for Target, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Cartwheel indexes particularly well with Millennials. Adding rewards may make Cartwheel even more attractive to this increasingly important demographic for the chain.
Mr. Baeb told the Post-Dispatch that Target began testing another rewards program called REDperks in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C. market last year and customers participating in that will be transitioned into Cartwheel Perks as it expands.