Friday, December 14, 2007
Have phone, will shop
At two regional malls, the cellphone is now a handy shopping buddy.
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Need jeans. Text message Valley View Mall.
Type in the letters "VLV" on your cellphone and several exchanges later, a list of stores at the Roanoke shopping center appears.
The sales information flashes on the phone screen -- $40 artist stretch jeans, regularly $50, at American Eagle. Curvy boot leg jeans $54, on sale for $35. Try Ann Taylor Loft.
A new method for maneuvering the mall, both online and via mobile phone, has moved into two of the region's shopping centers, Valley View and River Ridge Mall in Lynchburg, both owned by CBL & Associates Properties in Tennessee. It's powered by a California company, NearbyNow.
This company and others similar to it, such as GPShopper, are moving retail marketing into the mobile world. They offer services that supposedly make shopping easier and save time by eliminating the need to visit several stores to find a desired item, from a down coat to a wool scarf. The searching can happen on the spot while someone is sitting in traffic or walking through the mall's doors.
At least 72 percent of adults have cellphones, according to Forrester Research, a technology research company, and efforts by retailers to draw consumers via mobile devices are growing, especially during this year's holiday season.
While shopping at Valley View Mall this week, Caitlin Doyle, 18, said she has not used the mall's cellphone search, because she did not know about it. But her eyes lit up when she heard that it involved text messaging.
Doyle already receives entertainment news via text message from some magazines. The teenager from Salem said she would rather receive advertisements through text messages than e-mail, because "it's a lot easier than going through spam [advertisements]."
There's another obvious benefit.
"Your phone's always there," she said, putting her pink cellphone to her ear.
J.C. Penney also has tried mobile messaging. Customers can sign up for cellphone sales alerts and gift ideas at the retailer by registering on its holiday Web site at www.jcpgifts.com. It even offered shoppers a wake-up call early in the morning on Black Friday.
U.S. companies have spent $903 million on mobile advertising this year, up from $421 million in 2006, according to eMarketer.com. And 41 percent of people who use cellphones also send text messages, based on a survey by Forrester Research.
"Mobile is viewed by us more as future, very high potential, high growth area," said Dan Steinman, who is vice president of customer relations for NearbyNow. "Text messaging is ubiquitous."
The company launched the cellphone and online search service in August 2006 at a mall in San Jose, Calif. Now, it is in place at 196 malls nationwide, Steinman said.
NearbyNow's mobile and online searches differ slightly.
Here's how the online search works. Go to www.valleyviewmall.com. Under the product search category, type in a specific item, such as Nike shoes. Images of the shoes pop up, along with information about where they are sold and how much the shoes cost, including sales price.
The system also allows you to check whether the item is available at the store.
But when searching via cellphone, images of the products are not displayed, and there's not an option of checking an item's availability.
NearbyNow uses a mall's Web site to market and run these searches, Steinman said. However, each retailer at a mall chooses to participate by paying monthly and supplying product images to NearbyNow.
NearbyNow charges stores an undisclosed amount each time an item's image appears in a search. For example, an anchor store may pay NearbyNow up to $500 a month, Steinman said. But even if a store, such as a locally owned retailer, decides not to participate, its name still appears in a search.
In Roanoke, it's still early to gauge the services' impact on mall traffic or sales at Valley View. It has been in place for several months, and fliers posted at some of the mall's entrances advertise it, said Ashley Likens, Valley View's marketing director.
Steinman said it takes three to six months for the search to become better known at a mall. The service eventually has drawn up to 30,000 visitors a month online per mall. So far, NearbyNow has tracked more than 1 million monthly online searches across its properties.
Since June, when CBL rolled out NearbyNow at some of its malls, the online search has attracted the most users, compared with the mobile system, said Katie Reinsmidt, a spokeswoman for CBL. The service now is live at 40 CBL malls, and the company plans to expand it to more locations, she said. But she could not provide specific information about the service's use thus far.
"Overall, the response has been very positive," Reinsmidt said. "Anytime we can add a convenience to the malls, it gets more people into our centers."
In the advertising world, mobile marketing still is new and its ability to reach consumers largely is untapped, said Sucharita Mulpuru, a spokeswoman for Forrester Research.
"If the message is relevant and something someone opted to receive, it can be very impactful," she said.
Cellphone facts
72
41
2
percent of adults who have their own cellphone
percent of mobile users who send text messages
on average, the amount of cellphones most households own
