Macy’s Mobile Connection Conundrum: Customers Won’t Work Very Hard To Watch Your Commercials
Written by Evan SchumanMarch 3rd, 2011
When Macy's rolled out its mobile Backstage Pass program on February 24, the goal was straightforward. Customers would see QR codes placed throughout the stores, and scanning them with their phones would bring up a promotional video—an effect that could also be realized through a text message request. But it's forcing the chain to confront the mobile connection conundrum head-on. The videos—bandwidth hogs that they are—have to be able to quickly be seen on the consumer's phone. But how? Some Macy's stores offer customer Wi-Fi access, but not all. With (quite legitimate) mobile security concerns the talk of the Web, getting consumers to log into a store's wireless network won't be that easy. Those security fears are atop the fact that many consumers won't know how to sign into Macy's Wi-Fi, even if they want to.
Also, of the few consumers who are in a Wi-Fi-friendly store and are comfortable with the perceived security risks of connecting to a retailer's Wi-Fi and know how to connect and know that connecting to Wi-Fi is even an option, how many will want to take the minute and bother to do so for what are commercials?
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One Comment | Read Macy’s Mobile Connection Conundrum: Customers Won’t Work Very Hard To Watch Your Commercials
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
-Thad Peterson
March 14th, 2011 at 2:43 am
May be Macy’s should put up a few TV screens in all stores and loop the educational videos, you have mentioned here, and do a 2 small segment on how the customer can benifit from it. May be that will help, instead of expecting them to download the instructions too..