Everybody likes a great deal.
The Starbucks offer through Groupon last week highlighted this. The daily-deal company offered a $10 gift card to Starbucks for $5.
The deal went over so well that more than 100,000 took advantage and crashed the Groupon site, though ultimately empowered more smartphone owners to have a code scanned at checkout to cash in on the deal.
These types of offers are what I view as location drivers, since they cause or drive a consumer to go to a physical location. The value proposition is obvious: once there, the consumer is likely to purchase more than just the product or service that comprises the deal.
With so many mobile deals available, businesses are going to be hard pressed to stay ahead of the game. In the case of Starbucks, the potential for new mobile-enabled customers was created.
When Square Wallet offers a discount at your local merchant if you pay by Square, they are looking for new customers.
I have to wonder, though, if the tipping point for a mobile deal is becoming a higher bar.
For example, when my Redbox app sends me an offer for a free rental (good for today only), that is a great deal. The offer can modify behavior, and drive me to a location, which Redbox easily identifies the nearest one with the particular movie in stock.
But then the next Redbox deal may be for 50 cents off a rental, or one for half price. While a good deal, not a great deal, and not a likely location driver. They set the bar high with the first offer.
There’s little doubt that a 20 percent Starbucks discount would have drawn less response than 50 percent, an obvious great deal.
With so many mobile offers and deals available, such as RueLaLa, CampusSpecial, Gilt, Sale Locator and Sephora, to name a few, the mobile shopper is not short on choices.
The question is what will drive them to a location over time.
What do you see as future deal drivers?
Chuck Martin is editor of mCommerce Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily MobileShopTalk. He is author of “The Third Screen,” “The Smartphone Handbook,” and the soon-to-be-published “Mobile Influence.” He is CEO of Mobile Future Institute and a frequent mobile keynote speaker around the globe.
