Report: Retail Check-Ins Most Popular on Saturday Afternoons

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Shoppers in America check in on the weekends. A new study from LocalResponse finds that the hour between 2 and 2:59 p.m. on Saturday is when the most check-ins happen at retail stores. Meanwhile, Friday — led by a strong push at night — trumped Sunday as the second-most checked in day.

Not surprisingly, Foursquare was by far the most popular app for check-ins with 78.5% of the people using the social network.  Twitter (17.7%), Yelp (2.4%), and Instagram (1.4%) were the three next most popular.

More men checked in than women at all the stores in the survey, except Target — and even there, men (47%) were not far behind women (53%). The biggest skew in the other direction was Best Buy, which leaned 67-37 toward men.

“Our first major data report on consumer check-ins provides unique insights into consumer behavior trends and preferences among shoppers who are increasingly more willing to broadcast their location and intent to purchase,” Kathy Leake, LocalResponse president and co-founder, said in a statement. “We think this data will be a huge benefit for retailers in almost any industry so they can better market to their customers and understand consumer motivations as a way to increase conversions at checkout.”

In a vacuum, the figures do not mean all that much, but they do offer potential strategies for companies. For example, it might make sense to have more tech-savvy employees in the stores on Saturdays with so many shoppers arriving armed with smartphones and a willingness to check in. Then again, the increase in Saturday afternoon check ins is almost certainly directly related to the increase in customer volume. I’d like to see the number of check-ins compared to the jump in customer volume. That information would be more valuable, since it would give an indication of when tech-savvy customers were shopping.

Another interesting data point was the location of the check ins: “Walmart accounts for the vast majority of check-in among retailers (38.3%), followed by Target (15.4%) and then Costco (9.3%),” the report says. This has the potential to be extremely useful information for consumers, marketers, and owners. But again, I’d like to see this information compared with total customer volume. Only then would we know if 38.3% was a higher number than normal or a lower number, which would offer insight into Walmart’s customers and how best to satisfy them.

LocalReponse’s survey provides some glimpses of how we can use check in technology, but it’s only a start.

Here’s an infographic that summarizes some of the key findings.

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