Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Foursquare, Numbers can be decieving.
Foursquare is one of the new and most popular social media platforms today. The concept is to gain more traffic for business that advertise through Foursquare. By advertising discounts and free deals for patronizing businesses like McDonalds, customers "check-in" through applications on I-Phones, Droids, or other phones. Check-ins are the latest craze among the younger generation, who are constantly surfing for free deals thru the internet. Do these check-ins result in increased sales for someone as large as McDonalds. According to Oliver Blanchard@brandbuilder.com, a small scale campaign on Foursquare, McDonalds claimed to receive a 33% increase in check-in traffic, not actual foot traffic for one day. The actual bump in foot traffic was only 0.011% from the day before, and returned to normal levels within three days.. Therefore, the conclusion must be that check-ins do not always translate into increased sales. Many people just want to find free giveaways on the internet, and have no intention of making purchases. So companies like McDonalds that have such a large customer base already, must consider if the Return on Investment is really worth the investment.
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You posed a really good question in your final statements. For companies like McDondald's I feel like people don't jump at coupon opportunities because their food is already so cheap. I can see how this kind of site would more so benefit a smaller or more local company. I'm no expert on the "check-in" websites (so I'm really looking forward to learning about these), but it seems like people are using them more to find where their friends are, etc. However, if I saw that one of my friends ate at a restaurant, I don't think I'd be any more inspired to go to that restaurant.
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