Target Launches Mobile Coupons Nationwide
Shoppers at Target’s 1,740 stores in 49 states can now sign up to have the brand’s discount coupons sent to their mobile phones and can redeem those coupons by having their devices scanned at the checkout counter.
That makes Target, the second largest discount retailer in the U.S. after Walmart, the first brand in its segment to offer nationwide mobile couponing.
Shoppers can now opt in to receive up to five mobile coupons a month from Target by texting “COUPONS” to 827438. They then receive a message driving them to the mobile coupon sing-up site, where they can enter their mobile number, set a preferred delivery time for their coupons and certify that they’re older than 13. Registrants can also opt into the Target mobile coupon system at the retailer’s main and mobile Web sites.
Blog reports indicate that the coupons arrive in the form of a single 2D bar code that contains discounts for four or five products at a time and will be redeemable in stores for up to a month or until their listed expiration date. Cashiers will scan the code directly at the point of sale. The mobile coupons are not good for sales through www.Target.com.
The mobile coupons will only be used once—raising some question how a single code will work for multiple product offers. Target.com president Steve Eastman was quoted in USAToday as saying that while the coupons are not currently being customized to shoppers’ expressed interests or buying behavior, the company is looking into tailoring its mobile discount offers to fit recipients more closely.
While several grocery chains have integrated mobile into their coupon-acceptance platforms, JCPenney was the first general retailer to bring mobile couponing to a market trial with a test of the technology at 16 of its locations in the Houston area, launched in September 2009. Shoppers were able to redeem the coupons at point of sale in a program built on the Cellfire platform.
Coffee retailer Starbucks has also run tests of mobile gift cards using 2D bar code scanning technology.
A recent forecast by U.K.-based Juniper Research found that by 2014 more than one in 10 mobile subscribers in developed regions around the world will use mobile coupons, leading to almost $6 billion in redeemed value globally by that time.
