Giant Eagle Launches Mobile Redwards Program
Regional independent Giant Eagle has teamed up with location-based shopping app developer Shopkick to launch a mobile marketing solution called kickbuys.
Kickbuys are rewards for buying specific products or specific brands at supermarkets. Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, and Unilever, are the partner brands at launch.
“We believe that shopkick’s location-based shopping app is a valuable addition to our growing array of mobile customer offerings, led by our Giant Eagle app and eOffers digital coupon program,” said Rob Borella, Giant Eagle spokesperson. “Much like our fuelperks! and foodperks! customer loyalty programs, kickbuys are another unique way for customers to be rewarded for choosing to shop in our stores.”
Shoppers buy featured items from these brands, as shown on the shopkick app, at any of Giant Eagle’s 228 supermarkets to collect “kicks” – shopkick’s reward currency. These can then be redeemed for tangible items such as gift cards at many shopkick retail partners, song downloads, movie tickets, travel vouchers, Facebook Credits to play games online, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more.
“For retailers, shopkick made huge impact by detecting actual in-store presence,” said Sonny Jandial, associate marketing director, P&G FutureWorks Silicon Valley. “For brands, they’ve now done the same: rewards tied to the confirmed purchase of our specific products. This is a major breakthrough for mobile applications. For example, a shopper purchasing Crest Whitestrips at a participating retailer will earn 1,000 kicks – which is enough to redeem immediately for a gift certificate in the shopkick Rewards Mall.”
kickbuys are offered immediately in the latest version of the shopkick app. After downloading the app, shoppers enter their Giant Eagle Advantage Card number once, and from then on, are ready to be rewarded for purchasing specific products that they choose in the app. The rewards are earned once the participating products are purchased with the Giant Eagle Advantage Card at checkout . The users are notified when the applicable kicks are credited in their shopkick accounts within 2-24 hours.
“This is what brands have been dreaming of for years,” said Ed Kaczmarek, director of innovation at Kraft Foods. ”We have always hoped that we could almost instantly reward consumers for buying our specific products at a grocery store, and even interactively via their smartphones. shopkick is creating a dynamic mobile loyalty program, which is of great value for brands like ours. This is a unique opportunity to increase engagement with our consumers, further deepening their interaction with our brands.”
Shopkick has more than 2,100,000 active users only eleven months after its launch, over half of whom are women, the majority of them moms, and 49 percent of whom fall in the 25-39 year old age range; the ideal target for brands and retailers. shopkick is the first program to reward shoppers simply for walking into partner retailers, that currently includes more than 2,700 select Target, Best Buy, Macy’s, American Eagle Outfitters, Crate & Barrel, Sports Authority, Wet Seal, West Elm and Simon Property Group locations. Users can earn additional rewards for scanning the barcodes of featured products from brand partners, which include HP and Intel in addition to those mentioned above. Now, shopkick users can also collect kicks for the actual purchase of specific products.
The shopkick app is available for free on the iPhone from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore/ and on Android Market at http://shopkick.com/android.html.
shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins' iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers high-value rewards, offers and exclusive deals at shopkick’s national retail partners simply for walking into stores and malls.