Macy's Focuses on Mobile Strategy

Macy's Inc. (Cincinnati) is implementing several new technologies into its stores and websites as part of the company's comprehensive mobile strategy.

Now, Macy's and Bloomingdale's customers can use any smart phone to navigate the company's e-commerce sites. The department store chain has also launched an upgraded iShop application for iPhone. The new app loads faster, can be navigated more easily and integrates in real-time with macys.com to provide an improved mobile shopping experience.

Macy's has begun piloting the use of shopkick – a new location-based shopping app – at about 150 stores in the New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago markets. By downloading shopkick free from the iPhone App Store, Macy's customers can earn “kickbucks” reward points by simply walking into a Macy's store with their mobile device. They also will receive offers on products or related to specific departments within Macy's. Kickbucks can be redeemed for Facebook credits to play games online, song downloads, in-store gift rewards at Macy's and other shopkick partner stores, magazine subscriptions, iPods and charitable donations.

“Americans love mobile devices and are making them an integral part of their lifestyle,” says Peter Sachse, Macy's chief marketing officer and chairman of macys.com. “For our company, mobile is a way to make shopping more convenient and it helps build strong relationships with customers of our stores and online sites. We are seeing an increasing proportion of our online site traffic coming from mobile devices and we expect that proportion will grow rapidly as we develop and adopt new technology to embrace our mobile customer.”

Macy's operates about 850 department stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico under the names of Macy's and Bloomingdale's.