As retailers increasingly leverage location-based marketing to predict customer behavior and influence purchasing decisions, the result is more sophisticated data about who and when to target — and what offers to make.  

“Collecting GPS data is becoming quite pervasive. Using the knowledge of where a customer goes, which path she travels and how much time she spends at various locations can improve the quality of customer interactions and types of marketing offers and increase the likelihood that she’ll redeem an offer,” writes FICO’s Shafi Rahman and Amit Sowani.

FICO, founded in 1956, introduced analytic solutions including credit scoring, predictive analytics and business rules management and optimization, now used by most of the world's top banks, leading insurers, retailers, pharmaceutical businesses and government agencies, as well as managing the personal credit health of millions of individuals. 

The organization identified some key steps in location-based data collection:Continue reading...

Safeway is struggling to survive in a competitive market increasingly defined by upscale brands and value rivals. “Safeway’s greatest challenge is that competition from non-traditional grocers at the high end and low end of the market is stealing its customer base,” comments the Around Dublin blog. “Stores such as Grocery Outlet, Wal-Mart, Target, Sprouts Farmers Market, and Whole Foods Market have thrived in their respective niches as they expand throughout the United States.”

The grocery retailer's strategic course corrections include building new stores, converting older ones to a hipper more prevalent “Lifestyle” format with enlarged space to expand  offerings in the more profitable verticals of health, deli, and bakery, and its “Just for U” program, offering personalized deals based on a customer’s purchase history. Personalization is high on the list of features U.S. consumers would like to see more retailers offer.

Consumers can join the Just 4 U program to qualify for discounts online at Safeway’s website or by downloading an app for iPhone and Android devices, where special discounts based on a person’s shopping history are available. The targeted marketing program provides relevant, personalized offers, coupons, weekly specials and tools for each individual shopper.Continue reading...

Most of America’s top-rated restaurants are run by male chefs, yet cooking is still conventionally considered to be something that women are more interested in than men. So where do these guys come from, anyway? Where did they keep themselves out of sight all their lives before getting their Michelin stars?

Well, one young fella who likely hopes to be on that list someday isn’t hiding himself away anymore. Four-year-old Gavyn Boscio of New Jersey has been thrown into the limelight this holiday season thanks to a hue and cry raised by his sister, 13-year-old McKenna Pope.

Gavyn would like to have an Easy-Bake Oven for Christmas but he told his family that knows that “only girls” cook. So Pope is lobbying Easy-Bake’s manufacturer, Hasbro, to not market the product exclusively to girls.

The least they could do, she says on her Change.org petition that has been signed by more than 40,000 people, is to put a boy or two on the packaging and offer it in a color other than pink or purple.Continue reading...

In the wake of skepticism by brands — such as GM's recent we're out/we're in Facebook dance — on the efficacy of FB ads, the venerable BBC decided to put it to a test.

The BBC's tech reporter, Rory Cellan-Jones, created a bogus brand on Facebook, calling it VirtualBagel, to test the effectiveness of Facebook advertising by posing questions (such as asking why users clicked "like" on the page) and trying to suss out what makes users trust brands they encounter, even fake brands, on the site.

The page showed minimal information, but within 24 hours, had more than 1,600 ‘likes,’ primarily from India, Egypt, Indonesia and the Philippines, and the page was most popular overall in Cairo, with 75% of ‘likers’ 13 to 17-year-olds. Within four days, it amassed 3,000 likes, clearly from fake profiles of people living in those countries.

"What was striking was that hardly anyone from the US or the UK - two of the most valuable markets for advertisers - appeared to have clicked to like VirtualBagel," commented Cellan-Jones about the response to the faux FB brand page. 

Furthermore, “when the advert was adjusted to target only the UK, the number of people liking the page dropped to a trickle and the click-through rate - one measure of effectiveness - fell to just 10% of the previous level.”Continue reading...

As the issue of digital privacy persists, Sgrouples, which rhymes with “scruples,” is billing itself as the first privacy-centric social platform on the Web. Hence the tagline, "Privacy You Trust."

“We are the "Whole Foods" of our industry — the good conscience, doing the right thing, offering people what they really need and want - and we can be respectfully profitable by doing so. You don't need to serve people high fructose corn syrup to be profitable. Whole Foods understands that and so does Sgrouples. We don't need to spy and scrape. We are designed to serve and delight,” says Mark Weinstein, founder and CEO and digital privacy advocate.Continue reading...

The folks at Lego thought they were throwing open a door to a wealth of new consumers when it introduced its Lego Friends line back in December. Since it’s being designed for and marketed to girls, the company figured it would be creating a whole new source of revenue and please any parents eager to bring their daughters into the world of Lego.

Instead, it got a whole lot more, with 50,000-plus people signing a petition against the new line. The uproar’s volume may have been turned down since then but Lego Friends still has its detractors, a fact that the toy-maker is aiming to turn around.

The first step comes today, when Lego execs are scheduled to meet with two young women who helped lead the petition and discuss possible improvements, a release from Change.org states. Bailey Shoemaker Richards and Stephanie Cole launched the campaign against Lego on the Change.org site. The two 20somethings are members of the “girl-fueled organization SPARK Movement,” according to a press release.Continue reading...

Car brands have become intent upon roping in reluctant consumers from the Millennial generation. That's why Ford has decided to set up shop, literally, in Silicon Valley, and why General Motors has turned to MTV for advice.

Today's twenty-somethings have looked like trouble for a while to America's automakers because they can't be counted on to swoon about cars they way their parents did — and often still do. Of course, the importance of digital connectivity to this generation has been well-established, and Ford has managed to capitalize on it with its trail-blazing Sync infotainment platform.Continue reading...

For generations, Lego has been considered a pretty unisex toy. You could build anything with those colorful little plastic blocks, but that was before big-time partnerships and licensing ever became truly part of the marketing equation.

When you walk into a toy store and look at the Lego shelves, it’s not too hard to find Lego products aligned with things that are traditionally marketed to boys, and lately they've been co-branded: Lego Harry Pottery, Lego Star Wars, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Alien Conquest, etc. The strategy helped Lego engineer a massive brand turnaround, making about $1 billion last year in the U.S. alone. The next step, naturally? Creating Lego lines aimed at girls.

Having dipped a toe in the water with pink boxes containing brightly colored bricks and flowers, Lego went all out with the launch of Lego Friends, a line expressly targeted to girls, that launched in December. Not everyone, however, is convinced that gender-specific Lego is the way to go.Continue reading...