During the Halloween season I found myself scouring for a costume a day before my organization's annual Halloween costume party. I went out with my two friends with the same goal in mind: to get back home with a costume for the party. We went to Spirit of Halloween first, where I found a Minnie Mouse costume I stuck with because I had a $10 off coupon if I spent more than $50 on my purchase. Not too bad considering that costume was $49.99 and my total came out to around $43 with tax. But, my friends had no luck on their part. So, we went right next door to Target where my friend found a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Costume. We did some last minute grocery shopping and took off to the cash registers where we were greeted by a really perky young woman cashier who promptly scanned our things and the next thing that came out of her mouth is, "Do y'all have any discounts on Cartwheel today?" My friends and I looked at each other with confused faces and with our facial gestures seemed to ask one another what she was talking about. Finally, she tells us, " The new Target App, we actually have 40% off on costumes today," as she looks at my friend's TMNT costume in his cart. As soon as I hear 40% I rush to my app store on my phone and download the app curious to find what discounts I have on my purchases while my friend spends a mere 15 bucks on his costume purchase. (I chastise myself for not having waited to come to Target to get my costume, but reassure myself I made the right decision considering there weren't many options in my size at Target). Soon after downloading the app I'm taken to a page where I can take pictures of all my bar codes on my purchases and the app quickly lets me know if I have anything in my cart with a discount. I can proudly say I saved $2.37 that day. Not a bad start.
Going back and realizing the impact of this app, I don't think I realized how much of a easy tool this is to save some money during each purchase. It makes shopping fun when you realize you're spending a little bit less on something rather than paying full price--or maybe it's just my bargain hunter side showing. Target has a rep for being known as Walmart for the wealthy so this might just be a genius media tactic for Target to get consumers, like college students for example, and have them feel more comfortable shopping at Target by having them know that their wallets could suffer less.
And don't even get me started, the process is simple enough that a toddler could use it. Target has introduced an extremely easy interface for its consumers to use on the app. First thing you need to do is click on "scan the product" on the main menu and then the camera app takes a quick snapshot in less than a second and scans for any promotions for that product. After, it'll give you an option to save that promotion and whenever you go the counter your cashier is able to quickly scan the bar code themselves and at the end of your purchase you're able to track how much money you saved in total from using the app. It even accumulates how much money you save starting from the first time you used the app. It's an app I've definitely been recommending that my friends download themselves and has been a popular topic every time I have brought it up around my college peers, and even with my mother.