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Macy's latest retailer to offer mobile kicks

Macy's is rolling out shopkick, a location-based mobile shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for walking into stores and interacting with products. Although the retailer began testing shopkick in 2010 in some of its stores, the app is now available in all 800 Macy's locations across the nation, according to a company press release

Macy's activated the shopkick signal through Mood Media Corporation's audio system, which developed a technique that requires little more than approval from the retailer to go live, said Mark Elfenbein, chief business development officer of Mood Media.

To provide high-value rewards to shoppers actually walking in stores, the shopkick app detects a shopkick signal, emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating store and picked up by a shopper's smartphone handset, according to the release. Because the store is focused on rewarding actual visitors, it then delivers "kicks" via the app, which can be collected at all participating partner store locations. Kicks are redeemed for in-store gift cards, song downloads, movie tickets, Facebook Credits, donations to charities and more.

Launched in August 2010, shopkick now has more than 7,000 individual stores across multiple retailers, and 250 of the country's largest malls have fully deployed shopkick's technology.

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