Already selling through mobile phones as well as online and in stores, outdoor gear retailer Moosejaw Mountaineering launched two initiatives this week aimed at further blurring the lines between its selling channels. Customers can now use the digital payment service PayPal to pay in Moosejaw’s seven stores and the retailer has placed a kiosk in its Birmingham, MI, store so customers can read online customer reviews.
And, seeking to drive more deeply into cross-channel retailing, the company has begun a search for a vice president of multi-channel marketing who would be the company’s senior marketing executive.
“The concept is to take all the things we do across all the channels and let customers use them in stores, online and on the mobile phone,” says Jeffrey Wolfe, chief operating officer.
Recognizing that many of the college-age consumers it targets with its offbeat marketing campaigns pay with PayPal online and for mobile purchases, Moosejaw this week began accepting PayPal for payment in its stores, becoming the first retailer to do so, PayPal confirms. Once an order is rung up, the cashier provides the customer with the amount of the sale and the e-mail address of the store. If the customer can access the Internet through his phone he can log in to his PayPal Mobile account and e-mail the funds to the store; otherwise, he can initiate the payment through a text message, Wolfe says.
The retailer has ordered signs that will be placed around the checkout counters letting customers know they can pay with PayPal, and offering them double the rewards point in the Moosejaw loyalty program if they use PayPal.
Moosejaw came up with the idea for a kiosk where customers could read online reviews after store personnel realized customers were trying on items, such as backpacks, in a store, then going home to read the customer reviews. Moosejaw trained store personnel to use in-store computers to show customers the reviews on the Moosejaw site, but the kiosk enables customers to do it on their own, Wolfe says.
Unveiled yesterday, the kiosk concept was well received by shoppers in the Birmingham store, Wolfe says. “Three customers said some variation of, ‘Finally, because it’s way better to read the customer reviews while I’m holding the product instead of having to go home to research what other customers say about it.’ So now we’ve got the best of both worlds—the experienced, knowledgeable Moosejaw staff and our thousands of customers that field test the products and write honest, unbiased reviews,” he says.
To come up with more such ideas for cross marketing channels, Moosejaw aims to hire a vice president of multi-channel marketing with experience at a retailer that sells through stores and the web. “When there’s a promotion, we want it promoted in all channels,” Wolfe says, “and you need someone to lead that.”
Moosejaw is No. 297 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Gary Wohlfeill, executive vice president of marketing at Moosejaw Mountaineering, is speaking at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition, June 9-12 in Chicago, in a session entitled M-Commerce: Retail Web Sites Hit the Road.
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