In-Store Discount Apps a Mixed Bag

Since the introduction of smartphones, businesses have been trying to find innovative ways to use mobile technology to generate sales.  One example from this year's holiday season is Macy's, who announced earlier this week that it would be releasing a "Black Friday" app (developed in partnership with eBay) to help customers find the best deals in-store on the craziest shopping day of the year.  John McDermott from AdAge decided to test it out, and had some mixed results.
The app promised to send "exclusive deals" to shoppers using the app while in the store on Black Friday, alert customers to where they could be found, provide a map of the store, and track the user's location within the store.  McDermott found that the app did a respectable job of allowing him to search the day's deals, and was downright impressive when it came to showing him his location in the store.  However, its performance in pushing exclusive deals (20% off Ecko menswear!) seemed to be a little random, and it did a poor job of allowing him to locate exactly where those deals could be found.  In one example, the app told him that a dinnerware set which was on sale was on the eighth floor, while after consulting a salesperson he found that it was, in fact, on the lower level.  All in all, he seemed to be of the mindset that the app was more trouble than it was worth, save for the excellent map feature.
This experience highlights some of the difficulties with producing an effective smartphone app for generating in-store purchases.  While the possibilities are nearly endless for innovative companies to come up with ideas for apps, executing them in a truly useful manner can be quite difficult.  It really doesn't take much for someone to get fed up with an app when it doesn't work as expected, and when that happens it can actually leave the customer with a negative perception of the business.  For an in-store app like this one to be truly effective, it needs to be polished and tested enough that using it is easier, more accurate, or more enjoyable than talking to an employee the vast majority of the time.  And at that point, why even bother going to the store at all?  Mr. McDermott found that his easiest mobile app purchase of the day was from Best Buy, which he made while sitting at a Starbucks inside Macy's.