This year's NACS Insight Convenience Summit Europe in London recognised Valora's pioneering role in the deployment of mobile technologies in the retail sector. The Valora
k kiosk app, launched in the spring of 2017, attracted particular attention as an innovative digital loyalty programme.
Since 2015, NACS (the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing) and its European partner Insight have bestowed their annual Retail Technology Award to convenience-store and retail organisations which have made significant contributions to enhancing the customer experience through noteworthy digitalisation initiatives and projects. In the view of NACS and Insight, Valora has been particularly successful in these endeavours thanks to its k kiosk app. The award was sponsored by Verifone, a multinational corporation that provides technology for electronic payment transactions and value-added services at the point-of-sale.
As Michael Mueller, Valora's CEO, commented “We are delighted to have been chosen for this major award, since we have made substantial investments in digitalisation in recent years. For retailers like us, operating from fixed locations, these technologies open up a whole host of new possibilities. Thanks to them, we not only get to know our customers better, but we can also ensure that our offering and service are better tailored to their needs. They can also enable us to engage in dialogue with our customers. As a loyalty programme, the k kiosk app neatly ticks all those boxes.”
Discounts and vouchers customers can use themselves or give to others
Thanks to the k kiosk app, launched in March 2017 in collaboration with Dealini, Liquid Barcodes and Nothing Interactive, Valora customers can use their smartphones to collect digital loyalty stamps which enable them to benefit from attractive discounts. The app also gives them access to special price concessions and promotion campaigns. Furthermore, they can pass their vouchers on to their friends. These transfers can be executed either by sending a text message or by making a direct transfer to the intended recipient's k kiosk app, provided he or she is already a registered user. The k kiosk app is available at no charge from Apple's App Store for iPhones and from the Google Play Store for Android devices. The new app is proving very popular, as evidenced by the fact that within days of its launch it was already among the top ten free shopping apps available for download for both Android and Apple devices.
[Image legend]: Hilmar Scheel, Head of the Valora Lab, receives the Retail Technology Award, which was won by Valora at the 2017 Convenience Summit Europe.
