shopkick Users Surpass 3 Million Product Scans With Their Smartphones; Consumer and Brand Adoption Continue

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick, the location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for visiting stores, today announced it has quietly become the leader in product scans for rewards, while increasing its active user base to 750,000 users in five months, and its partner locations for its unique walk-in rewards. Users have scanned more than 3 million products at 250,000 locations nationwide, from partner brands Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and HP.

"We have always wanted to reward potential consumers for engaging with our products at grocery and mass merchandise stores. shopkick's scan rewards do just that. We also increase consumer discovery across aisles with multiple Kraft Foods brands they would not have sought out otherwise, further deepening their interaction with our products," said Ed Kaczmarek, Director of Innovation at Kraft Foods. "We feel shopkick is the clear mobile innovation leader and that is why we have partnered with them."

Kraft Foods powerhouse brands like Velveeta, Oreo, Kool-Aid, Triscuits, Planters nuts and more are among the popular products that have drawn shopkick shoppers around grocery stores for kickbuck rewards.

In addition to earning rewards called "kickbucks" for scanning partner brand products, shopkick users can earn more kickbucks and receive exclusive discount offers just for walking into more than 1,100 partner retail locations, including select Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters, Sports Authority, Crate and Barrel, Wet Seal, and Simon Property Group mall properties.

"We've been very loud about our shopkick Signal technology and what it has enabled for retailers: the ability to offer tangible, high-value rewards to consumers while providing marketing insights to retailers and brands, from multiple points in the purchase cycle," said shopkick Co-Founder and CEO, Cyriac Roeding. "What we've built in parallel is our brand-scanning rewards program, where anyone, anywhere can earn kickbucks by simply scanning partner products while shopping.  Millions of times our users have done that."

The shopkick app, combined with the first walk-in location technology, the shopkick Signal – an inaudible sound emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating retailer – verifies the user is in-store, and then awards kickbucks. This assures retailers that the marketing dollars input to the shopkick program are being spent to reward customers who are actually present within their store, something not possible with traditional location-based applications because they rely on GPS technology that has an error radius of 50-1,000 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.

Kickbucks earned can be redeemed for in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets, hotel vouchers, Facebook Credits to play games online, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more.

Launched in August 2010, shopkick has been downloaded 750,000 times, with at least ten percent of users active in the app every day.  The shopkick 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 (www.shopkick.com)

Shopkick, Inc. is a Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins's iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. shopkick brings the power of smartphones to the physical world shopping experience. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands rewards and offers to consumers simply for walking into stores and malls through a groundbreaking new location technology called 'shopkick Signal', and that provides exclusive deals at shopkick's national retail partners. Shopkick's growing retail partner alliance includes Best Buy, Macy's, Target, American Eagle, Crate & Barrel, Sports Authority, Wet Seal, and Simon Malls. shopkick grew to 750,000 users and 1 million check-ins per day within five months. It is the only 100% performance-based marketing platform in the physical retail world, with measurable foot traffic and transactions at stores.  It was named the top retail app by Wall Street Journal's Top 10 Apps of 2010, and a Top 10 App to Watch in 2011 by Mashable. shopkick has been covered continuously by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, ABC, NBC, CNBC, Fox, CNN, TechCrunch, Business Insider and most other major news outlets. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.

SOURCE shopkick

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