Kohl’s Corp. currently offers buy online, pick up in store only on the desktop version of Kohls.com, but it expects to add mobile commerce capability shortly, CEO Kevin Mansell said in the retailer’s recent Q2 earnings call, according to a transcript obtained by Seeking Alpha.

“We have not marketed it at all and in fact it has not been available in any format other than desktop so both mobile and tablet will be new in the third quarter, and with the launch of mobile and tablet comes a really aggressive marketing campaign,” Mansell said.

Mansell also discussed the success of Kohl’s mobile wallet feature in its app, saying that 30% of its mobile traffic is tied to the Kohl’s mobile wallet. Consumers can store their Kohl’s loyalty cash in their Kohl’s mobile wallet and consumers can also scan in-store coupons into their mobile wallet.  

Late last year Kohl’s said it planned to invest in mobile commerce and targeted marketing as part of a 3-year plan to turn around same-store sales, which had essentially been flat for the past few years. At the time Kohl’s said it would invest more in more mobile technology, although the company didn’t release a specific figure.

In its fiscal Q1 earnings call in May, Kohl’s, No. 52 in the just-released 2016 Mobile 500, said 7 million consumers have downloaded the Kohl’s mobile app. Its 2015 mobile sales are forecast to total nearly $400 million, according the Mobile 500.

“Utilizing our wallet in our app we are now able to deliver personalized messages which can be scanned and redeemed in-store,” Mansell said according to the Q1 earnings call transcript. “We also launched voice-based search on Android and image-based search on both Android and iOS. The pace of development will actually accelerate in the second and third quarter across the mobile platform.” Kohl’s also uses mobile vendor Retale to display mobile versions of its circulars on smartphones.

Kohl’s also this year tested beacons in its stores. Beacons are small pieces of hardware that retailers can place anywhere in a physical store to pinpoint the location of a consumer’s smartphone via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) wireless networking technology that’s common on all newer smartphones.

Retailers—or in some cases shopping apps such as RetailMeNot or ShopAdvisor—can use the beacon technology to send consumers who have downloaded their apps messages relevant to her exact location in a store. For example, if a shopper is in a store’s book section and a beacon is nearby, the retailer can send a push notification to the shopper’s smartphone with a link to a recent bestseller list. Retailers can also passively collect shopper and device data through beacons for later use, such as the path she takes through a store and how long she stays in each department.

Target Corp. announced earlier this month it would test beacons in 50 of its stores. Target is No. 43 in the 2016 Mobile 500.

 

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