BII AmazonBI Intelligence
Amazon is incentivizing people to download its mobile shopping app with a new paid referral program. Current app users receive $5 when they share the app with a friend who installs it and the friend receives $5 toward their next Amazon purchase.
Apps allow retailers to create a custom shopping experience that can be especially effective when aimed at loyal customers. Apps remain extremely important tools for data-collection, marketing, and sales channels.
  • For example, a retailer might have an app that features a new product or offer each day. Promotions like these can foster engagement, especially if they're tied into effective app add-ons like shopping lists, tutorials, or loyalty programs and customer rewards.
  • Retailers can also integrate location-based tracking in their app, so users might see a pop-up notification on their phone when they are near a store location. These are features that mobile websites can't replicate. 
  • Retailers can also leverage apps to send shoppers in-store, location-based messages. For instance, if a consumer is browsing an aisle of new designer shoes, that retailer might want to send a message to the customer's smartphone letting them know that there is a sale on last season's collection of designer shoes. 
Apps offer a tangential benefit to retailers, as well — they allow them to collect all sorts of information about a customer's behavior that a mobile website simply can't track.