As of March 2011, popular location based shopping app Shopkick has more than 1 million active users. Shopkick teamed up with retailers like Macy’s, Target, Sports Authority and American Eagle to widen its consumer base.
Usage of location sharing services with a social base, like Gowalla and Foursquare, among US internet users is comparatively low. The results of Pew Internet and American Life Project’s September 2011 survey indicate that only 4% of the US internet audience used such services.
Although the usage of social location sharing services is low, location based mobile services, which include tools like GPS navigation, store locators and location based weather alerts, are widely used. December 2010 Microsoft survey indicates that such services were used by around 50% Americans with location aware mobile devices. Among these, one third people made use of such services for shopping or coupons.
According to the survey, which covered countries like the US, the UK, Germany, Canada and Japan, GPS navigation is the most popular location-based mobile service, being used by around 70% people. Services like weather updates, traffic updates, restaurant information, locating nearest convenience services and shopping/coupons were used by 46%, 38%, 38%, 36% and 33% people respectively.
Marketers can capitalize on the growing popularity of such services by taking help from an internet marketing firm. According to the RIS News and IHL Group November 2010 survey, 43% retailers planned to partner with a service like Foursquare, while 24% were thinking of teaming up with Shopkick or similar service in the next two years.