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J.C. Penney to launch mobile coupons
By Kim Nguyen, knguyen@acnpapers.com
Plano-based J.C. Penney Company Inc. is one of the many companies taking advantage of the age of smart phones and widespread Wi-Fi Internet access with mobile-phone coupons.
Retailers send a text message to a mobile phone offering the user a promotion by sending a return text with a special code. The retailers then send a second message with the promotion’s bar code, which would be entered at the store’s point-of-sale registers.
J.C. Penney tested a slightly different concept successfully in the Houston market.
Bishop said coupons will be distributed through the Internet and mobile coupon application Cellfire Mobile, which allows registered users to access the Cellfire service on mobile phones to browse and save coupons on the go, use mobile phones to redeem retail coupons and view grocery coupon lists.
The codes of coupons distributed to consumers’ cell phones will be manually entered by the store associate at the point of sale. A special “hot key” was added to the registers, Bishop said.
“We offer our customers affordable prices and great promotions,” she said. “Sending that information out to their cell phones helps them keep up more easily with the coupons.”
As customers go more mobile and move away from paper coupons, J.C. Penney is one of the few nationwide companies to help consumers find alternate ways to save money.
According to Cellfire, the average redemption rate for paper coupons is 1 percent; the average redemption rate for mobile coupons is between 15 and 25 percent. During the five consecutive quarters following October 2008, consumer coupon use grew by 16.7 percent from 2008. Marketers invested heavily in coupons and brands issued 367 billion coupons in 2009.
Dallas-based 7-Eleven also launched a pilot marketing test of the program where consumers were offered a free Slurpee, Big Gulp or coffee by texting a promotion code from their cell phones.
Grocery stores Tom Thumb and Kroger also use Cellfire to save coupons to customers’ member discount cards. Even Taco Bueno offers discounts with the digital coupon program.
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