During the last holiday shopping season, consumers expressed a greater interest in spending at local establishments - but there was a gap between their sentiment and where they actually shopped.
Boutique Loyalty is a way for community-based stores to outsource a loyalty program that pools resources for cross-marketing and customer retention. Consumers will be able to earn rewards when they search for - and purchase at - participating merchants in their own community and when traveling.
Co-founder Andres Mendoza sees Boutique Loyalty as an incentive for shoppers to buy at local boutiques and support their community's infrastructure.
The application has entered Intel Innovators, a Facebook competition where 18-24 year old entrepreneurs share their ideas, promote them to likeminded peers and have a chance to win big money.
In the conversation, Andres and I discuss what Boutique Loyalty can offer local merchants and shoppers.
Smart phone users have no shortage of choices for local-aware discovery applications. What features and incentives would have shoppers turn to Boutique Loyalty before these other, already established options?
This convo is sponsored by:
Vitrue, an original Facebook Preferred Developer Consultant, is the leading social marketing platform facilitating relationships between brands and their fans across multiple social networks via its software-as-a-service solutions. Social marketers and agencies world-wide use Vitrue's Social Relationship Management (SRM) platform and its Publisher, Tabs, Shop and Analytics products.
Brandwatch is one of the world's leading social media monitoring and analysis tools, with offices in the UK, US, Germany and Brazil. Global brands and agencies use our tool to cut through the noise on the social web and find the conversation that matters, empowering decisions that improve their business.
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Neil Glassman is principal marketing strategist at WhizBangPowWow, where he delivers integrated social, digital and linear media solutions. Join his conversations on Twitter and Google +.