Aisle411 Adds Meal Solutions

Mobile shopper technology company Aisle411 recently expanded the capabilities of its smartphone application to offer full meal solutions.The company in October announced an alliance with Sterling, VA-based ZipList that provides access to a bank of 130,000 recipes, enabling users to pick a recipe and a supermarket to receive a store map showing them exactly where to obtain all the ingredients, down to specific sections of aisles. The deal adds a shopper marketing spin to the Aisle411 app, which helps users locate products and promotions within stores as well as manage shopping lists, find coupons, scan UPCs to access product reviews, and share their experiences via social media networks.Previously available only for iPhones, Aisle411 also expanded its reach this month by introducing a version for Android phones. Already available in roughly 2,200 stores across many major markets in the U.S., the service has also begun to spread out past metropolitan areas (such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago, Baltimore and Kansas City, MO) to include stores in less population-dense cities in states such as Idaho and Wyoming.The app is also fully functional in Aisle411's home base of St. Louis, where Supervalu’s Shop ‘n Save was one of the first supermarket chains to adopt the platform. While retailers do not have to cooperate with Aisle411 to have their stores covered by the app (the company has mapped several stores by using maps provided in circulars and on websites), Shop ‘n Save president Marlene Gebhard has found the platform to be an important competitive tool in a technology-driven marketplace.“You keep up with the consumer, and consumers today are highly into technology,” Gebhard told the Institute. “One could argue that Aisle411 gets shoppers out the door too quickly, but that’s what a lot of consumers want and so I want to give it to them. The key is to get them in the door, and this product does that.”Gebhard said that the 42-store Shop ‘n Save chain experienced a competitive advantage as the first St. Louis grocer to work with Aisle411, although rivals Schnucks Markets and Dierbergs Markets have since followed its lead. The app is not supermarket-exclusive; scores of Ace Hardware, Lowe’s and The Home Depot stores, for instance, are involved as well.In addition to helping shoppers get to the checkout faster, the app can also direct them to exclusive deals from advertisers: Aisle411 makes its money by selling ads to manufacturers including Coca-Cola Co. and General Mills.“This all started one day when I was having a hard time locating surge protectors in a grocery store, but it has evolved into an ability to take digital marketing and integrate it with in-store merchandising,” Aisle411 ceo Nathan Pettyjohn told the Institute.“We wanted to break down barriers for retailers, but our revenues come from brand advertisers. This allows them to connect with shoppers during the act of purchase,” said Pettyjohn. “Say a shopper puts pretzels on her list. We can recommend she add a Coke fridge pack, and she can just tap the pop-up [window] and automatically add that to the list.”Aisle411 does not yet have the ability to offer deals through digital coupons or loyalty cards, though Pettyjohn said that those features may be on the horizon. He also hinted at offering shopper intelligence derived from usage data. “That’s something we will look at in the future,” he said. “We can provide intelligence built around product groupings, dayparts and individual stores. That can influence merchandising both physically and on the phone.”

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