When will retailers in Europe start to utilize Gowalla and Foursquare?
Foursquare and Gowalla, the 2 hottest location based services of the year, are spreading rapidly in Europe's early adopter community. I get new contact requests every day.
While Gowalla has the advantage of being available everywhere, Foursquare that is limited to a dozen or so European cities, has the blessing of many Silicon Valley influencers and social web evangelists, plus a lead in the US market. For now it is difficult to say which of the two apps will eventually become superior on the old continent. For the moment, many I know simply use both.
For merchants, restaurants, bars and clubs the increasing adoption of the two services means that they very soon need to think about monitoring their spots on Gowalla and Foursquare, and to leverage the potential that lies in this very new way of customer recommendations and loyalty.
I am pretty sure that 99,9 percent of all the store, restaurant and bar managers out there are not aware of the fact that a small, but growing number of customers are checking in to their location on Gowalla/Foursquare with mobile phones while doing shopping, ordering their coffee, sushi or a drink.
It will be interesting to see who will be the first in Europe to offer discounts to people checking in, to regulars and to "mayors" (at Foursquare, you become a mayor if you are the person with the most checkins for a location during a specific period). Those companies and retailers who dare to go this way now will get a lot back - not only early adopter love and an increasing number of regulars, but valuable customer feedback and insights.
At the moment, paying attention to location based services for merchants is more an experimental effort that can have some positive consequences. Soon, monitoring and leveraging these kind of tools will be a necessity for many in the retailer, catering, nightlife and tourism sector.
