Starbucks Mobile App Success

If there were some kind of group awards for the winners of digital reimbursements, Starbucks would have undoubtedly made the first trophy for its Mobile Pay Application. Others, such as Samsung's LoopPay and Apple Pay, are undoubtedly lagging behind Starbucks' Mobile Pay App. The cell phone accounts for 16% of Starbucks purchases, amounting to over $7 million in revenue each week, numbers that are very remarkable. Furthermore, the Mobile Pay App has over twelve million active users in North America. So, the mobile apps, especially the Mobile Pay App are what Starbucks has been capitalizing on to push its way forward ahead of its rivals (Welch & Buvat, 2013).

In the year 2014, there was the payment of transactions volume worth over two billion U.S. dollars through the Starbucks’ Mobile Pay App, which is a shocking mobile penetration’s rate in comparison to the other retail app programs. Just in the past couple of months, Starbucks made a public announcement of the accessibility of the company’s Mobile Order and Pay on iOS and the Android gadgets (Zooz, 2016). The gift is an additional characteristic to the company Pay App that enables clients to put and recompense for an order before they go and collect them at any Starbucks’ contributing site. So far, there is a quick emergence of the Mobile Order & Pay as the fastest and easiest means of conducting transactions by the Starbucks clients (Zooz, 2016).

The basis of the company’s App is on a clogged-ring payment scheme showing that it is only valid for the Starbucks provisions’ purchases. For that case, it makes it possible for the reward of consumers for their loyal purchases, as the company usually awards a star to the clients for every penny used on a Starbucks’ authorized license. Upon accumulation of a definite amount of stars, there is eligibility by the customer for free beverages. The trend motivates the clients to keep on purchasing from the company thus leading to better sales and stable as compared to the rival companies (Zooz, 2016).

Regarding the mobile payments, the rivalry between the monsters like Google and Apple among others, there is the consideration of the Apple users as more stylish than the Android consumers. For that reason, the Apple Pay is presently suitable to the early users only. Moreover, Apple Pay has no offer for a replacement for the credit cards, so, for that case, the Apple Pay has an appeal to a limited number of the audience only. Nonetheless, the Apple and Google have one similarity; that is they both harden the retailers’ lives in that they must have the uniquely equipped point-of-sale schemes for the accommodation of their NFC payment techniques. On the contrary, the Starbucks’ POS generic method is available (Ovide, 2016).

The Starbucks’ KTC theory also known as the Know Thy Customer is the best lesson people can learn from the company. The Starbucks’ clients are always the before time adopters and hi-tech by nature as they embrace new technological innovations and products. So when there was the offering of the payment app that is of class and also saves time and effort by the Starbucks to its clients, it was giving the type of enticement that was quite appealing to the users and made them always to go back again. Moreover, the additional desirability of the cumulative stars for the gratis goods has led to the transaction overwhelming.

The development of the mobile application is not always the best option for the variety of retailers; nonetheless, people can learn from the other Starbucks’ mobile plans such as the performance of SMS marketing. The company focuses the SMS marketing on its consumers more than it does about the brand, thus ending up inviting more clients to go in for the rewards which are the same as to the way loyalty program functions. The SMS usually acts in a similar way to email marketing but is a useful alternative as it achieves extremely high open rates of up to about 90% quite often. By the creation of another interaction channel between the company and its customers, Starbucks is helping in avoiding alienating the clients that are not using the mobile application but are still interested in receiving the rewards. The primary motive behind the SMS use by the company is to attract the clients so as to pay a visit to the Starbucks’ brick-and-mortar sites by the creation of content that focuses on the company’s latest specials thereby elevating the probability of driving more clients in paying visits to the stores (Honigman, 2015).

The most important thing for the retailers when it comes to the mobile marketing is the ability to experiment with a variety of the available strategies when studying to find out the schemes that work best for the business. The firms should always focus their marketing gifts just around the desires of the clients and evaluate the value of the returns like Starbucks is doing. For the achievement of success in mobile marketing, just like Starbucks, the company must develop that trust and loyalty with the customers or audience.

References

Honigman, B. (2015, June 20). Lessons Learned From Starbucks On Experimenting With Mobile Marketing At Retail. Retrieved from http://etaileast.wbresearch.com/lessons-learned-from-starbucks-on-experimenting-with-mobile-marketing-at-retail

Ovide, S. (2016, April 4). How Starbucks became so successful at coaxing consumers to pay with smartphones | The Seattle Times. Retrieved from http://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/starbucks-secret-on-mobile-payments/

Welch, M., & Buvat, J. (2013). Starbucks: taking the “Starbucks experience” digital. Retrieved from http://ebooks.capgemini-consulting.com/dm/Starbucks.pdf

Zooz, Y. C. (2016, February 8). KTC: The Secret Ingredient of Starbucks’ Mobile Pay App Success. Retrieved from http://www.retailtouchpoints.com/features/executive-viewpoints/ktc-the-secret-ingredient-of-starbucks-mobile-pay-app-success