“The entire landscape of the circular and newsprint has changed,” said Adrian Parker, director of social media and digital strategy at RadioShack. “A part of the impetus of us moving our weekly ad on Facebook is make content relevant and accessible to the Facebook consumer.” However, the company will also continue to print circulars. He said that RadioShack’s implementation of Facebook’s “Like” button on its e-commerce site also informed the retailer’s decision to create the weekly ad app.
RadioShack’s Facebook consumer base is a “younger-skewing demographic in the 18-34 [year-old] age bracket,” said Parker. The base splits evenly between genders, he said, but it “over-indexes in African-American and Hispanic females.”
“The lion’s share of our Facebook and Twitter conversations are from female consumers,” Parker said.
The weekly ad app allows consumers to “like” a product and directs consumers to RadioShack’s e-commerce site for purchase. Parker said that RadioShack is measuring interactions such as “likes,” sharing to Facebook and traffic that the app directs to the e-commerce site.
The app also includes an opt-in for consumers to receive RadioShack’s weekly ad via email. Parker said that email provides an added means for RadioShack to communicate with consumers and can deliver exclusive “deals and promotions not available to the general market.”
“There are different tiers of how to engage consumers,” he said.
Similar to RadioShack’s print circular, the Facebook app presents products based on a consumer’s location. Parker said it’s “on our roadmap” to factor in consumers’ interests and hobbies as stated in their Facebook profile when personalizing the weekly ad.
RadioShack has discussed whether to develop an e-commerce presence on Facebook, Parker said, but the retailer hasn’t looked into whether to only feature a select number of products, such as those promoted in the weekly ad, or whether to launch a full-fledged storefront.
