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Malls going to online service

Shoppers can search for items, check on sales and get coupons before leaving home.

By Mark Albright, Times Staff Writer
Published June 2, 2007

Most shoppers today read up on products and check prices on the Internet before buying. Now mall stores have a new tool to get in shoppers' faces online before they make up their mind.

Westfield Group is launching a service that enables buyers to do product searches and compare prices in their local mall stores before leaving home. Shoppers can get coupons, spot sales and find out if their nearest mall store has their size of a specific item that can be reserved for pickup. Or bargain hunters can ask to have sale price alerts for stuff they want text-messaged to wireless gadgets during a shopping trip.

"We're bringing together the store experience and the online world, " said Scott Dunlap, chief executive of NearbyNow Inc.

Tampa Bay Westfield malls are among the first to have NearbyNow built in to their individual mall Web sites. Westfield Citrus Park and Brandon went live this week. Westfield Countryside is next. NearbyNow Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up linked to 23 Westfield and General Growth malls nationally, is negotiating to be linked with most big mall owners' properties nationwide within a year.

Westfield labeled the upgrade a success in a six-month test in some California malls, but it remains to be seen if execution becomes as flawless as promised. For starters, the product search is only as good as individual stores are committed to keeping their lists current and their offers up to the minute around the clock. And in other places where it was tested, less than half the stores bothered to post more than a text list of what they have.

Small stores, apparel chains and jewelers are the most missing in action. Department stores and retailers with a big online-shopping presence dominate the site because they are equipped with product photos and computerized inventory tracking by store in both size and color. They are more willing to pay extra for the online visibility including pop-up ads, paid search priority and coupons.

Some experts say the stragglers may want to join.

"Technologies like this are about to move to the forefront of store retailing, " said David Polinchock, a consultant who tests new tech applications at the Brand Experience Lab in New York. "Almost everyone has a cell phone today and shoppers 60 percent, according to some studies research purchases - especially big-ticket items - online before they buy. The challenge will be how well this one works."

Malls' online experiments have had uneven results. Wish lists offer friends and families gift suggestions, but are rarely used. Mall Web sites are plentiful, but most are little more than lists of stores, events, sale events and operating hours. Traffic is minimal, typically 30, 000 unique visitors a month to 100, 000 during the Christmas holidays.

"We're adding a Google-style product search that makes mall sites relevant to how people shop today, " said Dunlap. Follow-up surveys found one in 10 shoppers who used NearbyNow said it influenced an ultimate purchase. One in 100 tried to reserve something.

Reserving stuff, though, is hard to pull off.

Some chains can handle queries by e-mail directly to and from each store. Most do not. So NearbyNow telephones each store from a Kansas call center. Some store clerks will check the racks, some won't. Some will hold products for a customer for 24 hours, others won't. NearbyNow promises a response within 90 minutes, but the average is 20 minutes.

Westfield pays nothing for the NearbyNow hookup. But all of its stores and mall kiosks get a free text listing of what they want summoned for product searches.

NearbyNow gets its money from the competitive bells and whistles (photos, paid search, pop-up ads, text messages, coupons). Pricing varies from $25 a month for a kiosk to $600 for a department store.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8252.

[Last modified June 1, 2007, 22:44:29]