Kohl's Technology Utilization

Kohl's technology utilization

Duc V Dao

Keuka College

MKT 360 Retail Marketing

Spring 2016

03/18/2016

Mark McNaney

Kohl's technology utilization

Nowadays, the development of mobile apps has changed the way people doing business. Mobile apps helped people to create brand awareness and build strong customer loyalty. Kohl’s Corporation is an American department store retail chain and is one of the pioneer in taking advantage from technology. It’s been few years for Kohl’s Corp., with the used of social media and in-store App technology to engage and retain customers has brought advantages to Kohl’s against other competitors. According to Brohan (2014), Kohl’s has ranked 23 in the Internet Retailer 2014 Top 500 Guide for three-year in a row and in order to become the most engaged retailer in America, Kohl’s will invest in mobile commerce. In this assignment I will analyze how has the company used social media and mobile App to take advantages.

[pic 1]Social media networks now playing an important role in the growing of any business. It is one of the best ways to reach potential customers. Kohl’s social media networks have a huge number of followers on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, it’s in the following order, 11,427,7k, 627k and 594k. The huge number of followers help Kohl’s easier to reach their customers to market their products. Being actively on social media help Kohl’s to build strong customer loyalty and better brand awareness. For example, in Kohl’s Facebook page, their status or picture have 1k liked within an hour.

Besides, Kohl’s also build a friendly brand via interactions between company and customers, they invite their customers to share their opinions on particularly topics or events.  Samuely (2016) argue that “it also asked individuals to upload thank-you speeches to family members using the hashtag”. By using hashtag, people will see who are using hashtag as a group, thus, hashtag create a connection between company and customers, it made them become together.

[pic 2]Social media networks have also become one of the most popular ways clients can connect with customer service. Potential clients can ask questions about pricing, shipping and more in a less formal than ever. Questions are often more direct and customer service representatives can respond briefly and in real-time without waiting for a live chat on the website. In this aspect, Kohl’s doing really well with quick answer customers’ questions, inquiries by professional customer service specialists within an hour.

Mobile app development has made sales and purchase things easier than ever before. It has changed the way people buy and sell products and services. It has also changed the way customers view and analyze products before purchasing. In addition, it has also gave the seller chances to engage and retain customers by providing their consumers the information that they are looking for. This means that consumers have more options than ever to make informed buying decisions. According to Lavu, "now what we’re doing is segmenting our customer database and the message we want to communicate to them, Segmentation is going to be key" (as cited in Samuely, 2015). Mobile channel gives Kohl’s potential to engage with their customers in real-time by using their location and profile information, it also helps Kohl’s ability to give specific offers in order to make it more attractive to particular customers. Haselmayr (2014) believes that, Apps serve many functions, company can provide general info, prices, booking forms, search features, user accounts, messengers, news feeds. Furthermore, most of young people are addict to their phone in some ways, they always have their phone in their hands and tend to rely on their mobile devices, so an App has become a new tool to reach the customers. According to study of Soper (2014), statistics show that the average American spends more than two hours a day on his or her mobile device, in which 86 percent of that time is spent using apps and 32 percent of their time spent on social media channels. The data shows that mobile apps are dominating the mobile, it means Kohl’s can easily to advertise their product with less cost and engage them into any marketing campaign. Additionally, many people expect a business or brand to have its own mobile App. It is not only necessary to gain competitive over other businesses, it also necessary to avoid falling behind Kohls’s competitors.

Mobile app is not only beneficial for Kohl’s but also their customers. There is a lot less time spent to looking or buying something by using mobile App. With mobile application, Kohl’s customers can access anywhere at any time while on the train, in the waiting room, in line at StarBuck or even in the middle of the night. Especially, consumers can interact with Kohl’s while on the go, they can order things online then pick up in-store. That means when their customers want to purchase something, it is much more easier for them by access the App. In fact, it is very clear to compare between using web desktop and mobile app, when we are using desktop, we are not only spend all our time on just a few websites, we spend on the web to check email, Facebook, Twitter, and read news, There are lots of distraction and useless information for buying things. Otherwise, mobile app has specially designed for Kohls’s customers, it provides specific customer needs information such as product’s details and reviews from other buyers to help them make decisions. As one of the pioneer in using social media channels and mobile app, considered as creative ways to reach their existing or potential customers' attention, enhance offerings, that made Kohl’s become more competitive. According to Kohl’s reported (2015), net revenue of Kohl’s for the third quarter ended October 31 increase 1.2% to $4.427 billion compared to the same time last year, and net revenue of the first nice months of 2015 rise 1.0% to $12.817 billion (as cited in Lindner, 2015).