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7-Eleven’s Mobile Coupon Trial Improves Scan Accuracy, Raises Marketing Ethics Questions

December 17th, 2009
Still in its infancy, the mobile coupon is struggling to prove its value to retail. But these coupons have found a powerful ally in the $54 billion, 37,100-store 7-Eleven chain. The global convenience merchant is most of the way through a two-month trial of mobile coupons in some 200 7-Elevens in San Diego, with company officials preparing to extend the trial.

The chain has thus far avoided some of the read-rate accuracy problems that have plagued other trials (A&P last month swore off scanning directly from cell phone screens due to concerns about inaccuracies), pointing to an approach that determines the make, model and carrier of a phone before trying to scan. It then adjusts the scan parameters to be the most effective for that particular device. But 7-Eleven is also running smack into the delicate ethics issues around mobile marketing, where chains need to collect phone numbers and E-mail addresses to begin. In this case, for example, many of the consumers being targeted are children, officially as young as 16 and potentially as young as 14. Those youngsters are mixed with a target group of young adults, as old as 24.

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