By Wouldn’t you love it if you could walk into a store and have your phone automatically alert you of any deals and coupons going on within, as well as giving you the ability to earn reward points just for stopping by? That’s what Best Buy’s looking to bring with their Shopkick application. The new technology (which will be accompanied by an Android app sometime soon) will be tested in 257 of its US stores.
The application will be able to detect a “shopkick signal” (an inaudible sound that your phone will be able to detect so no GPS or WiFi is required) and will buzz you if there are any sales to take advantage of or if there are any opportunities to earn “kickbucks” which you can redeem for Best Buy gift certificates. Pretty cool concept, but there’s no word when Best Buy will throw this into full swing (their current goal is 70 stores by October 1st). We’ll keep an eye out for any more details down the line.
[via Mashable]
Sounds like a cool idea, I am looking forward to seeing how this works out in reality.
probably another crap app to be running all the time in the background as a service. Inaudible sound? So it’ll be using the mic non-stop? can’t wait to see those battery stats.
cool idea though. It will just probably be implemented poorly (hopefully they outsourced their dev). If if were a general app that for use with multiple retailers it would be so much more useful. But I don’t know how many people will want to install an app just for when they are physically already at a best buy.
I’m with you, Charlie. I really like the idea. Can’t wait to try it out once the app hits!
Nice idea, but how much of a battery drain will an app be that keeps the mic open at all times listening for this special sound.
Inaudible sound? Does the mic run all the time? Would this listen all the time? Wouldn’t that hurt battery as much as anything else? Really interesting idea, but as simple as it sounds, it makes me wonder why it hasn’t been done already…
This is straight out of back to the future .. LOVE IT!
Even if all you had to do was turn your phone on for a few seconds for it to work, it would totally be worth it.
I am so excited about this. It seems like an awesome idea.
Jeff,
You need to boot up the application to be able to register the sound, so there shouldn’t be a battery drain. And I have trouble believing that it’s a simple thing to do. Until recently (Shopkick was founded in 2009) there wasn’t exactly a huge market for such a service and it wouldn’t have been financially sound to put such an infrastructure in place Now that smartphones are becoming widely available it is easier to convince companies such as Best Buy and Macy’s that it is worth their time, effort and money to put the transmitters in their stores and partner with Shopkick on this venture.
Will there be settings so you can opt out of sales on things you don’t want?
Here’s how I see it working:
1. Walk into Best Buy
2. Launch the app
3. Check results
4. Exit app
Leaving the mic on full-time would be horrible and unnecessary. I hope they do it the reasonable way.
Best Buy Sucks. They charged me $60 restocking fee for returning a 16gig iphone. Never will shop there again.
This is only appealing to me if it offers exclusive sales. If it’s the same sales I see in the mail or online, why bother?. I don’t browse inside Best Buy very often, and when I do, I’m not tempted to buy a microwave on a whim just because my phone says it’s on sale.
@Kwaping Yes, that’s how most power users would do it, but clearly Best Buy wants to have it just “work”, ie not having to open the app either before you enter the store or after you were in it. I think an aGPS background service would be a better approach, with maybe a notification that would link to the app and then show you the deals. that way its all the time and the user still has an option to just dismiss it.
oh and since its aGPS it’s just in the vicinity…ie see a great deal and then stop in, not just for when you’re already entering the store.
…can’t I just manually launch the app?
I don’t like backround crap running especially when I goto bestbuy like maybe once ot twice a month..
Does anyone goto bestbuy daily?
If its not just best buy and other retail stores use shopkick it would be worth it to have it running on a day out
ShopKick rocks. You can get 100 right away with code artemis1936