The department store has revealed that it is boosting its use of smartphone friendly technology in-store.
Macy’s has revealed that it is keeping up with the times and is making sure that its shopping experience is compatible with the favorite device of most of its customers by enhancing its mobile commerce capabilities in a number of different high tech moves.
For instance, it has expanded its iBeacon mobile marketing messaging capabilities through Shopkick.
This will allow the location based marketing experience to be available throughout the holiday season not only at its flagship shops in New York City and San Francisco, but also to other locations across the United States. This could make it the most large scale retail implementation of iBeacon mobile commerce tech that has been seen so far.
That is only the beginning of its expansion of mobile commerce and shopping capabilities for consumers.
The retailer also announced that it will be bringing in the Image Search image recognition app, which was created within its Idea Lab. That stand alone mobile app has also been incorporated into the Macy’s application. Based on the customer’s images, this software will provide consumers with recommendations for items that can be found either in the store itself, or on their online or m-commerce website.
Moreover, in certain cities, items purchased online or over m-commerce will have same day delivery available. This has become possible through a partnership with a startup called Deliv, and will be available in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., San Jose, San Francisco, Seattle, as well as the state of New Jersey.
This is only the latest in several moves that have been made by Macy’s to ensure that it is keeping up with the smartphone and tablet based shopping experience. It also makes the retailer one of the first to have established its range of different mobile commerce capabilities in advance of the 2014 holiday shopping season. Beyond image recognition and iBeacon, it has also announced that Apple Pay transactions will be accepted at both its Macy’s and its Bloomingdales stores, and that beyond same day delivery, in store pickup services will be expanded.
According to the company’s own stats, users of the eBay mobile app spend an average of 150 minutes on that application every month. Comparatively, the application of the closest competitor (which was not identified on the site) saw only 47 minutes of use in the average month.