Family Dollar App Update Highlights Consumer Demand for Digital Experience In-Store

For the in-store shopping experience, digital is a key feature in the aisles, combining wallets, loyalty — and by extension, better inventory management.

As reported in recent days, Family Dollar has announced new features to its app that that will debut next month. Among the features: Consumers will be able to more seamlessly manage coupons via a redesigned wallet feature, explore weekly ads and find products as they shop. And as has been noted, future updates, slated for early next year, will include in-app eCommerce and personalization capabilities. In addition, there will also be a mobile app rolled out for the sister Dollar Tree brand stores.

The shift toward integrating digital offers and rewards more fully into the in-store setting has been spotlighted by PYMNTS in past research. And as discussed here, we found that 42% of grocery shoppers cited the availability of loyalty programs with rewards as something that would help them stay loyal to certain merchants.

Coupons and Rewards Keep Consumers Coming Back

In the report “Big Retail’s Innovation Mandate: Convenience and Personalization,” created in collaboration with ACI Worldwide, 77% of retailers said digital rewards and coupons were proving essential to keeping consumers engaged. The accompanying chart shows that mobile apps are critical, too — and 80% of merchants said consumers would switch to other providers if apps were not in place. The fact that more than three-quarters of merchants recognized the need to deliver alternative payment methods — a designation that would include digital wallets — speaks volumes, too, to linking apps and coupons and a means to pay for it all.

During the most recent conference call with analysts to discuss earnings, Dollar Tree CEO Rick Dreiling took note of continued efforts “drive sales productivity and increase operating efficiency like simplifying the truck unloading process and improving in-stock levels. You heard me say many times that retail is all about growing units, growing transactions, and growing sales per square foot. When these retail fundamentals move in the right direction, everything else follows.”

With personalization on the horizon, with smarter search functions in the actual brick-and-mortar channel amid the omnichannel continuum, there ability is there, we’d add, to fine-tune inventory management. The discount stores across the Family Dollar and Dollar Tree footprints, as management laid out during the most recent call, have seen increased sales of private brands — with unit sales up 4% and comps growing by 15%.

“In the past year, we have added nearly 5 million new customers across both segments, with 2.6 million of these customers having a household income over $125,000,” said the CEO — a stat that gives further evidence of the appeal of coupons and rewards across all demographics.

The discount retailer is hardly alone in its bid to refresh its app. Walmart, as reported earlier this year, redesigned its mobile app and homepage and has sought to craft personalized shopping experiences that unite digital and in-store capabilities.

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