With little more than a week left before Black Friday, retailers are already seeing consumers make purchases and prepare their holiday shopping season strategies – and mobile retail is playing an increasingly large role.
Both the Android app store and Apple’s app store offer Black Friday shopping apps to help consumers plan their day; Android has dozens of options. A Black Friday Survival Guide app from Sazze, Inc. is the current #1 free lifestyle application on iTunes.
Retail giant Toys “R” Us has redesigned its free mobile shopping apps and mobile-optimized sites for its Toys”R”Us and Babies”R”Us brands, and launched a new tablet-optimized site for easy access to the two brands.
Customers can now use their tablets to take advantage of options such as buying online and picking up in-store, and having products shipped to their local store. Toys”R”Us said that mobile is its fastest-growing channel of customer engagement.
“As more and more customers use their mobile devices to browse and shop with us, we have worked to enhance this channel by redesigning our mobile site and apps, and have launched a tablet-optimized experience, making it even easier to shop Toys”R”Us and Babies”R”Us while on-the-go,” said Milton Pappas, vice president of e-commerce customer experience for the retailer.
Meanwhile, QVC said that its U.S. mobile ordered increased by a whopping 142 percent in the third quarter, and predicted that “Cyber Monday will look more like Mobile Monday as more consumers than ever before turn to mobile and tablet devices for holiday purchases.”
Claire Watts, CEO of QVC U.S., said that the company has the second-largest mobile retail business in the country and is pushing engagement across all of its platforms this holiday season as a way to “offer an alternative to the holiday chaos.”
“Our strategy to create digital shopping experiences with strong interactions across TV, PC, tablet and mobile platforms is not only a success with our customers, but is significantly outpacing the industry,” Watts said.
Coupon and deal provider ValPack announced a new partnership with sister company Savings.com that has “enabled both companies to substantially expand their offerings across traditional, digital, social and mobile platforms,” according to a company statement. This year, for the first time, ValPack is offering discounts at national retailers like Kohl’s, Sears and Macy’s. The company’s iPad app allows customers to print coupons to a wireless printer, and its free Passbook application reminds customers to use a coupon from Passbook when they’re in close proximity to the business.
ValPack also noted that “with mobile payments on the rise this year, payment transactions are expected to make holiday shopping and savings on-the-go more seamless than ever before.”
“We strongly advise shoppers not to pay full price for anything this holiday season, and we suggest taking advantage of digital savings tools,” said Michael Vivo, president of Cox Target Media – the parent company of both ValPack and Savings.com.
According to a survey from BFAds.net of 600 consumers, about a third said they expected to spend more than last year this Black Friday.
The survey showed that 36% of participants planned their Black Friday shopping prior to Thanksgiving, using a combination of online and physical newspaper ads, with most preferring to use the Internet. Online Black Friday ad-posting competitors such as BFAds.net and BlackFriday.com are expanding their rivalry into mobile, with BFads.net touting a revamped wireless application this year, and BlackFriday.com launching its app for the first time.
BFAds.net’s survey also showed that shoppers listed laptops and tablets among the items that they were most excited about buying.
