Grocery Sundays: Don’t Forget Your Phone

First let me apologize for being quiet these past two weeks. Work, life, holidays, etc. It’s early, and I’m getting ready for a morning workout, but before I commence, my brain always leads me to food – first and foremost. This is probably the reason why I’ll never be thin. My love for food will never let that happen. I digress.

Yesterday, Safeway and PepsiCo announced they will team up with FourSquare to revamp grocery store loyalty programs through location-based rewards and check-ins. Why has this taken so long? Who knows! Oh wait – here’s why … According to a recent eMarketer report (nov. 2), interest exists for mobile coupons, but adoption low. Meanwhile, there are a total of 3 million FourSquare users, most of whom are male. Stats show that nearly 80 percent of location-based social network users are males, and 70 percent are between the ages of 19 and 35.

I think it’s smart for the program to be a pilot, which is looking only at 300 stores in Southern California. My hope, phase 2 looks at other locations, spread out, throughout the US. Southern California doesn’t necessarily reflect the general consumer audience.

Yes, mobile is the perfect place for grocery store incentives especially for people looking for nutritional information, product reviews and deals. So, while stats lead us down the road of asking if a loyalty program might succeed, I’m left hoping that this is another “let’s dip our toes” in the location-based incentive game and take this purely as key learnings. Social media continues to be scrutinized for ROI, and a program like this only means hard and fast numbers, for an adoption rate that is quite low and for an audience who may not be the right one.

SoCal friends, will you be checking-in to the program?