New Idea for App - Discount Donkey

Dcuguy89

Hi Guys,

My Name is Niall Quinn & I'm representing a group who are working on a new app for smart phones.

Our Product is a mobile application which send’s user’s discounts and offers from stores close to them using GPS technology on a smart phone.


Our idea is to create a mobile application which is used for targeted marketing. This mobile app will use GPS technology to identify when users of the app are within a 500 metre radius of a particular store. The user will then receive an alert from the retailers about offers or recommendations in the store. The app will also be used to send discounts to users from retailers based on a loyalty points scheme.


We will have a website where customers & retailers can login. The website will have 2 logins, 1 for the customer and 1 for the retailer. The customer can download the app for free from our website. They will also create a profile and select what their interests are in order to determine what stores they will receive alerts from.

Customers can receive both “Recommendations” & “Discounts” are part of this app. For instance customers may receive alerts on general deals that are available instore e.g. “Hi John, Today we are having a 10% sales, Thanks, Jack & Jones”.

Customers will scan in the receipt of any purchases they make in the store in order to accumulate loyalty points. When a customer reaches a certain amount of loyalty points they will be rewarded with discounts to use for the next purchases.

We will record all information on customers such as purchases made in store, times visited stores, conversion rates etc & we can pass it onto the retailers for market research. This also allows retailers to build customer loyalty.


We plan to offer the app to users for free and charge retailers/stores a monthly subscription.

We believe that we offer consumers a great way to receive vouchers for products their interested in without receiving spam.

It is also an appealing way for retailers and stores to build customer loyalty and receive research on their customers in a cost-effective way.

We would love to hear your feedback and any thoughts you have on our product.

Thank you for your time.

Niall

stcstc

isnt this what O2 do with their app, maybe not quite as sophisticated but basically the same thing

Pixelcraft

I honestly couldn't think of something more annoying - imagine if you're in a shopping centre and the app is bombarding you with offers. Wouldn't be for me I'm afraid!

Dcuguy89

Hi Guys, First of all, Thanks for the Read and feedback

Stcstc - Are you talking about the 02 treats App?? if so we very different to them. Our Product will send alerts to users when they are in the surrounding area of a store. It will be a marketing technique to try and entice users to come into the store

Pixelcraft - our main idea was to make this app a really relevant product for the particular customer. Users can sign up to their interests, for example if you chose "DVDs", you would only receive alerts from shops like HMV, Golden Discs etc and only when your are within sight of the store.

Also the App would only give a sound alert once and present a menu listing the notifications from particular stores. Users can use the remove icon to quick get rid of the stores their not interested in.

We really feel that customers will want to receive notifications as it will only be concerning shops that interest them.

Thanks,

Niall

UberGeneration

I think this is an amazing idea but only if the app does not spam me with push messages. on my iphone already have many apps that send push notifications but overal its a really great idea!

JonJoeDali

groupon

Pixelcraft

Fair enough, would be interesting to see how it works. I guess if it's opt in that's the difference

Dcuguy89

Thanks Very Much for the feedback. We have to emphasize that the user won't be harassed by loads of alerts when walking down a shopping center.
1 Push message will be sent to alert the user of discounts/recommendations/offers available. If the user choses to continue they will be presented which list of stores which have sent a notification. Only Stores that match their interests will be present.

We are also planing to have an option in the app to allow users to change the distance settings. This will determine how near they will be to a store before they receive a notification.

Another feature is a "Search" option. This will allow users to manually enter what their looking for. We feel this will be beneficial for people who want to use a store as a once off but haven't signed up to to receive notifications from that particular area.

e.g. I haven't signed up to "Coffee Shops" but I'm in town and decided I want a coffee, so I enter "Coffee Shops" in the search option and I get a list of the nearest coffee shops and any offers they have.

Thanks Very Much for the responses so far. Great to hear feedback.

Any other Feedback/Questions are much appreciated.

Thanks,

Niall

flash harry

well done on the idea. I was in Estonia of all places a few years ago and in one shopping area there was a system similar but it obviously recognised roaming mobiles and sent texts to tourists.

Would annoy the you know what out of me in Grafton Street UNLESS I had opted in and was getting relevant, prerequested info which it sounds like is your intention....

Best of luck with it

Dcuguy89

Thanks Flash Harry!! Yes our main aim is that when a user gets a notification they are actually delighted to check it out as it alerting them of stores they visit with special offers on.
In this economy we believe anyone would happy to hear of any bargains/ discounts in our favorite stores available and especially when they are within 500 meters of the store


Johnjoedali , In Relation to "Groupon", It seems that their website offers random discounts based what city yo live in. Its a good website but very different to our product.

Thanks again, All this feedback is very helpful.


Niall

Sparkyd2002

Kudos to you, what a nice novel idea. Of course i wouldnt be for inviting myself to be spammed but as long as it didnt involve selling your own mother to opt out I would be willing to give it a go. I am personally always wary of these opt in services for mobiles as they have a very bad habit of managing to cost you money. That said this sounds like something totally different and as long as its reputable then I'd be willing to give it a go.

Well done on the idea. Good luck with it.

newfrontier

Good idea OP,

But it has been done ..check out geodealio formed at the dublin startup weekend ..the app has been developed with many of the features you described will be available to download soon... try it out and then see if you want to proceed, would be my advice.

Dcuguy89

Thanks for that. We never knew of their existence to be honest.
Probably because they are very low key at the minute as they haven't launched.

We are going to continue with this product as we have put of work into it. Here are some screens to give you an idea of the app design.





Also we have a short questionnaire, Would really appreciate ye filling one in.
CLICK HERE and complete our Quick Survey

Thanks again & really appreciate the responses!

Niall

KED

Hey Niall Quinn - does this mean you're giving up on Sunderland !

smcgiff

The idea is not new - I've seen something similar with Bluetooth technology and similar to a lot of industries its all about marketing to get your Version to be the one used.

YouBuyLocal

Hi DCU guy,

If you can develop the app then excellent, that is something to be proud of. But this business won't go anywhere depending upon surveys and users logging in and adding their details. Thats "targeted advertising" from 1995. You are competing against big guys like 4square and Groupon Now! + google deals. This is a congested space with lots of big and small players. What you have described has absolutely nothing unique.

Further, the subscription fee is a no-go. Businesses get bombarded with apps and websites that want to advertise their business and are much more discerning these days about what they are actually getting for their advertising buck. Because you are providing nothing new, you will struggle to attract the advertisers unless you use a freemium model. The problem is you need to find a way to complete the ad-transaction loop and tie it to their identity as an app user. That way you can guarantee that they will only get charged for the customers they receive through your system.

Also, if you use receipts, would people not just be picking up receipts outside shops and using their friends and other people's receipts to build up loyalty rewards, as opposed to from only their own purchases.

You need a much better niche than this. It currently sounds like a college marketing project, but all you need is that spark of something to turn it into a business. So good luck with it, hope it works.

Also, sending pm

Axwell

Lads this thread is 10 months old, just pm the OP if you have any questions on it.

Locking it up as its been dormant for so long