SINGAPORE, 14 May 2018 – Since launching for merchants on 28 February 2018, WhereIsWhere, Singapore’s first free location-based discovery platform connecting brick-and-mortar retailers to nearby consumers, has crossed over 1,500 Singapore locations, and counting. WhereIsWhere is seeing a rise in retail players adopting technology to drive traffic to their offline stores. It has forged and continues to nurture a number of strategic partnerships with brands including hair and beauty chain Jean Yip; F&B outlets Sushi Express and Old Chang Kee; major departmental stores and shopping malls including Millenia Walk and I12 Katong. More partners and locations are in the pipeline in the coming weeks.
While ecommerce is growing year-on-year in Singapore, 76 percent of Singaporeans still prefer human interaction, according to PwC. This presents an opportunity for brick-and-mortar to enhance its competitiveness versus online competitors. By leveraging digital-first platforms, these offline retailers can now implement an omni-channel strategy to ensure store traffic, conversions and sales.
Michael Leong, Industry Advisor of WhereIsWhere said: “Consumers’ lack of awareness on retailers’ products and service offerings, locations, ongoing deals and promotions have resulted in low in-store traffic, and in turn, lower revenue. The absence of a platform for differentiating their product and service offerings remains a key challenge facing many offline retailers.
“With WhereIsWhere’s location-based marketing platform, we hope to offer businesses a time- and cost-effective targeting solution to help them optimise marketing and sales efforts, and converting nearby consumers into customers,” added Michael.
Major retailers tap WhereIsWhere to re-innovate their marketing & sales function
According to integrated marketing agency Cognito, 89 percent of marketers in Asia regard securing budget or investment for marketing activities as their biggest challenge in 2018. To help brands with multiple outlets across Singapore, WhereIsWhere is offering a cost-efficient alternative to advertising campaigns. While registering stores and availing of listings are free of charge, retailers have the option to target the most relevant audiences within specific parameters for a fixed monthly fee of S$100 per outlet.
Major retailers and brands in Singapore have adopted WhereIsWhere, which has expanded its network to over 1,500 locations in the country – a number which is fast-growing.
Dawn Yip, Group Marketing and Operations Director of Jean Yip Group said: “Jean Yip Group is very honoured to be invited as one of the pioneer merchants of WhereIsWhere. The ‘location-based targeting’ marketing concept fits in with our brand since Jean Yip Group has retail outlets island-wide. We saw the potential in this application that can bring more traffic to the malls and help grow our brand.”
Diane Aw, Head of Retail of Millenia Walk said: “We are actively using social and new media to drive traffic and conversion and have been on the lookout for another complementary medium which can provide the mall and its tenants a channel to regularly announce events, offers and new-to market products especially in real time. The discovery app WhereIsWhere fits our requirements nicely and we look forward to this platform’s versatility and dexterity in supplementing our existing marketing efforts.”
Months following the launch of its merchant platform, WhereIsWhere’s mobile app for consumers will launch in June 2018. With WhereIsWhere, shoppers can now easily discover nearby activities, flash promotions, products and services based on where they are and when they search.