mCommerce: GPShopper Turns Cell-phones into Sell-phones
It’s the night before your wife’s birthday and you’re scrambling to find that perfect gift, and not just any gift will do. She’s had her heart set on a rare Lionel Ritchie box set and you’ve got two hours before every mall closes its doors. If you’d hit up Amazon six weeks ago you wouldn’t be in this jam.
Now imagine you could whip out your cellphone, perform a quick search and tap into a database of over 85 million products from 30,000 retail stores tagged by zipcode. Entering a keyword, UPC code, product name or model number would deliver a list of stores by distance from where you are right now (in the McDonald’s drive thru lineup) along with prices. And you can view product images, descriptions and even pay for the product while your apple pie is being boxed. Then your cellphone gives you GPS enabled directions (unlike the sometimes unreliable MapQuest) to pick up your order.
Sound like the distant future? It’s already here. GPShopper has made it happen and introduced a new advertising channel for offline retailers (or etailers with physical stores), with top etailers like BestBuy, Toys R Us and Staples already on board.
