Customer Loyalty and Rewards with Location-based Services

I’m the Mayor of my local Starbucks (aka the Peninsula office for PersistentFan) and regularly check-in on foursquare to retain my title.

This morning, I placed my usual order and was informed that my drink would be gratis as a reward for being the Mayor.

Very cool!

(A while back I checked into my fifth different Starbucks and received the Barista badge but wasn’t offered any discounts or coupons.)

 

There have been a ton of posts about Foursquare, GoWalla etc working with brick and mortar retailers to implement reward systems. The opportunities to utilize location data are large and some of scenarios are pretty compelling (witness the rumored $100m+ acquisition of foursquare )

Having now experienced one of the aforementioned customer rewards scenarios, I am even more bullish (and more of a fanboi) than I was yesterday. Now if I could just win back the Mayor of Taqueria La Bamba from Norm Y …