Black Friday Behavior in February: shopkick Users Show Record Shopping Behavior at National Retail Partners on a Randomly Selected Day

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick, the largest location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for walking into stores and interacting with products, today announced the success of Black Friday 2, an experimental initiative designed to significantly boost foot traffic to partner retail stores using holiday tactics during normal, non-peak shopping days throughout the year. Black Friday 2 took place on Friday, February 24, exactly 3 months after the original Black Friday, and resulted in the company's largest walk-in day ever, delivering a record-breaking number of shopkick users to participating partners, including: American Eagle, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, Macy's, Old Navy, Toys "R" Us, Wet Seal and more.

"We asked a simple question: What if retailers could create Black Friday shopping behavior any day of the year that they wanted?" said Cyriac Roeding, Co-founder and CEO of shopkick. "So we offered about double the kicks to users for walking into any shopkick Partner Alliance store, and that was still worth less than a dollar. It resulted in a dramatic increase in foot traffic. Our users rushed to the stores and went shopping. With Black Friday 2, which was an otherwise completely normal workday with no big sales, we proved that shopkick can literally create Black Friday-like shopping behavior and foot traffic amongst users by harnessing the power of our unique Alliance of partners. Out of thin air, on any day of the year - that is powerful."

On Black Friday 2, the shopkick Partner Alliance broke the previous record of single-day walk-ins, set on Black Friday in November 2011.

"This event showed the network effect of shopkick's Alliance. Having multiple retailers and brands provide the same rewards currency simultaneously – kicks – creates a great experience for consumers and encourages them to walk into multiple retail stores," Roeding continued. "Everyone wins – retailers, brands and consumers alike."

With 3 million current active users, shopkick drove over 5 million walk-ins and 12 million product scans, as well as more than $110 million in-store revenue for partner retailers and brands in 2011.

Shopkick partners with over 40 global brands, 11 national retailers and several media entities spanning categories from grocery to fashion to electronics and beyond.

To provide high-value rewards to shoppers actually walking-in stores, the shopkick app detects a shopkick signal, emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating store and picked up by the microphone of a shopper's phone. Because the retail partner knows it is rewarding actual visitors, it then delivers rewards called "kicks," which can be collected at all participating partner store locations. Kicks are redeemed for in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets, Facebook Credits, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more.

Because shopkick is able to detect actual presence inside stores, partner retailers ensure that marketing dollars put into the shopkick program are being spent to reward customers who are actually present in the store, translating into higher value rewards for the shopper. Presence detection is something not possible with traditional location-based applications, which rely on GPS technology that has a typical error radius of 500 yards on mobile phones. And, because the detection occurs on the user's mobile device, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.

Launched in August 2010, shopkick quickly became the largest location-based shopping app in America. The app is available for free on the iPhone from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore/ and on Android Market at http://shopkick.com/android.html .

About shopkick, Inc.
shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins' iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers high-value rewards, offers and exclusive deals at shopkick's national retail partners simply for walking into stores and malls. Even more rewards can be earned for scanning partner brand products at over 250,000 stores nationwide. In combination with a groundbreaking new location technology called "shopkick Signal", the app can verify location within feet, and because the detection occurs on the phone, privacy of presence information is completely in the users' control. shopkick's growing partner alliance includes American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Macy's, Old Navy, Simon Property Group, The Sports Authority, Target, Toys"R"Us, west elm, The Wet Seal, Visa, Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Intel, HP and more. shopkick is the only 100% performance-based marketing platform in the physical retail world, with measurable foot traffic and transactions at stores. The app grew to 3 million users in its first 18 months. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.

SOURCE shopkick, Inc.

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