In a recent article by Chain Store Age, Target announced that they are rolling out a mobile coupon initiative chain-wide, which will involve the ability for their stores/registers to scan bar codes off of customers’ mobile phones. This is a hugely significant evolution in digital marketing for two specific reasons. First, the President of Target.com, Target’s eCommerce business, seems to have been the one spearheading / sponsoring this initiative. I’m not surprised here due to the clear ties with digital media. However, it is critical to see the role that eCommerce can have in driving bricks & mortar adoption of digital technologies. I would have expected the head of retail brick & mortar to have been the one spearheading this… Second, this is a landmark foray into digital that actually required a multi-million dollar IT infrastructure upgrade to new optical scanners (which are the kinds that can scan a mobile phone). If you do the simple math, assuming Target has 1,500 locations and each location has 20 registers that require optical scanners priced at approximately $200, you’re looking at an IT investment of $6 million just for hardware. That doesn’t include the internal resources of time / money to develop the web applications and back-end technology to accommodate and support this initiative pre-scan and post-scan. Check out the full article here…
