Best Buy is rolling out an in-store mobile couponing system in conjunction with a startup called shopkick. The system will be in place in 187 stores by tomorrow and 257 stores by October 1.
Earlier this month, we got a preview of how the system works (see video below). Instead of checking in, as you would with a geo app like Foursquare or Gowalla, shopkick automatically recognizes when someone with the shopkick app on their phone walks into a store. As MG wrote at the time:
The minute you enter a Best Buy location, your phone recognizes it and you get points and a message that there are deals available at this location. You can also use it to scan items and get more points and other potential deals.
Unlike other location-based apps, this doesn’t use GPS (or even WiFi triangulation), instead this is a custom hardware plus app system shopkick created and installs in partner stores. This means no more fake check-ins and it allows the app to do some other potentially interesting things
The shopkick app also lets you scan items with your phone to get deals, and as you earn points, or “kickbucks,” you can redeem them in a variety of ways, including discounts at the store, Facebook credits, or song downloads from Napster.
I’m seeing a new trend opening up here. Going to Best Buy over lunch? Take all your coworkers phones with you so everyone gets points. Rotate every day. ;-)
LOL. Someone is always looking for a way to scam! I suppose honesty and integrity are overrated qualities.
This sounds like it could get annoying. Are they able to update you out of store too? – That would suck, the last thing I need is my phone blowing up with deals etc. I just want to go to the store, get what I want, I don’t want to be walking around the goddam store scanning stuff. Just give me the discount there and then, why do I need to screw around with my phone so you can store all the info and then sell to me later? This is a stupid idea created by greed and over-inflated buzz about a technology that 99% of the world don’t even care about (Foursq 2mill users). Nobody cares about all this checking in, not yet at least but they keep pushing it.
Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the show?
Co-founder of a company trying to sell a proprietary nonGPS based check-in technology to brick and mortars claims that Foursquare/Gowalla checkin-ins are great but “most of them are fake”?
OMG I’m freaking shocked.
Or you can locate your phone with this mind breaking technology:
http://locate-my-phone.com/
Or you can die, spammer.
Sounds like an innovative way to attract customers to shop on discounts.
Sure, discounts are the obvious but it seems to me, it can be so much more. If the consumer is in the store, and they’ve opted in, they must be interested thereby opening up tremendous opportunities to engage them in any number of valuable ways – not necessarily just discounts.
This is a trillion times more useful than Foursquare!
Foursquare = Fadsquare!
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Holy crap, these spammers are ruining the comment system across the entire internet. Already trashed yahoo….
Don’t see it available for Blackberry. What platforms support it?
How many “kickbacks” are required on average before one can redeem them?
Seems like a battery killer.
Excellent! The fact this uses a local proprietory wireless technology means it will be far more accurate and reliable too. Further, I wonder if ShopKick and Best Buy have considered how the system could be used to direct customers out of the store during an emergency, where smoke may make the phone display the only way to navigate to safety? In fact, why not in any building, not just Best Buy! Have we just co-invented IPS? (Interior Positioning System)
Be great for hotels too when returning to ones room drunk…
“Take me to room 10101.”
“Certainly Sir, and would Sir like a Full English and coffee in the morning? My BodyKick sensors indicate you may need it.”
They are really clever aren’t they? Making it a fun game to introduce (indoctrinate) us to being tracked everywhere we go. Man, if the Nazi’s had this sort of technology we’d all be speaking German right now. :P
We all create a dossier of ourselves at Facebook with our personal info, interests, likes and dislikes and various commentary on other topics that we are somehow interested in. We all let Google read our emails and serve up ads based on the content of your personal conversations, then we let them follow us around the web to every web page we visit, now we let various companies track our every move.
Won’t seem so weird when it becomes mandatory to check in at every location you go. This way they can calculate how much tax you owe for traveling and also make sure you aren’t somewhere you don’t belong. Work, store (to spend the credits you earn at the factory), home, sleep. work, store, home, sleep. work , store, home, sleep. sleep, sleep, sleep, death!
(then they tax your loved ones for you having died before doing your fair share of labor at the factory)
Slippery slope much?
Once upon a time, we all tried to avoid advertising.
Remote Control? TIVO? Off switch.
Remember those days?
Now, we gladly encourage Brands to permeate every digital orifice we offer up.
The fact is that BEST BUY will use this to promote items which they get the Brands to coin-in on. You are NOT going to get promotions for something that’s personalized to your tastes, you’re going to get promotions for items that the BrandS pay BEST BUY to promote for them (BEST BUY win:win:win, everyone else pays them, from Brand to Consumer).
And, we let them do it.
Just give me the best damn price. Don’t make me work for it.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it says “instead this is a custom hardware plus app system shopkick created”. Doesn’t that mean you need to buy the Shopkick hardware in order to get points or coupons?
This doesn’t seem to update to your phone.
Am I way off base?
Why does TC post an article on this company every week? ?????
I understand ShopKick is paying you, but don’t make it obvious.
They’re a new-ish startup who have just obtained a large amount of funding and have been working on some fairly impressive technology and have managed to secure the support of a major brand to try their new technology.
Seems to me that this is what techcrunch promises to report to me.
I want this from techcrunch.
If you don’t like it, don’t read it.
pedigree.
What is even more surprising is how Shopkick got BestBuy to install their solution in 257 stores! Seems like they skipped the pilot program to see if this solution would even work for the masses. Best Buy must be desparate!
Congrats level three…im gonna go back to flirting with the employee for 20% discount AND the reward BANG!
Poor idea, with some technological bells and whistles to pretend it’s innovation.
for the same reason, it might very well succeed.
if it is worth hacking, it will be hacked.
Quite promising!
Will Shopkick tell me if they have any iPhone at Best Buy? You know, the one with the bigger gee-bees?
The interesting thing is that the application will likely be most effective before you get to the store. Especially is Shopkick somehow enables comparison shopping without ticking off all Best Buys and others. It will be tough for them to balance the needs and desires of the consumer with those of their advertiser partners.