What Can A Grocery Store Teach Travel?
So why isn’t the travel industry using Foursquare to increase business and build a loyal travel base the way Vons is ?
Contrary to what the puerile think, Foursquare is not about badges and mayors,
The location based service giant is all about making deals with commercial partners, and creating new ways of rewarding customer loyalty.
Tristan Walker, Foursquare's director of business development , admits it.
He likens it to those foodie movies where the star chef whisks off his chef's hat, and dashes out of the kitchen to shake hands with the loyal, wealthy diner.
In this case the loyal customer of Vons ( a subsidiary of Safeway) may not be wealthy, but the grocery chain still rewards him when he links to Foursquare.
Foursquare partners with lots of big name retailers including Starbucks (Barista Badge for checking in at 5 different Starbucks) and Whole Foods, where loyal “checker-iners” may get a free lemonade or reusable bags.
And smaller partners like Monique's chocolates in California, benefit from Foursquare assistance in creating the kinds of platforms that help the retailer offer and position specials.
All this is well and good.
But until allen and gerritsen , a medium-size, smart Watertown, MA-based branding and advertising agency came along and proved the Foursquare Loyalty program actually worked, who knew?
Now we know.
While Vons is not a client of allen and gerritsen, and the study is not strictly scientific, the results are insightful:
• Eighty-six percent of Vons’ customers interviewed said they were “somewhat likely” to link their Foursquare account to the supermarket’s loyalty program, confirming that people are indeed willing to give up their location data (privacy?) in exchange for deals and offers
• Fifty-three percent of shoppers said they were likely to visit Vons regularly because of the Vons-Foursquare program
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