San Francisco Shopper Wins 4 Million Kickbucks for Shopping Spree in shopkick's 12 Days of Kickmas Sweepstakes

PALO ALTO, Calif., Jan. 18, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- shopkick, the location-based shopping app that rewards shoppers simply for visiting stores, today delivered gift cards to be redeemed by Eric S. of San Francisco for the more than 4 million kickbucks he won as the "12 Days of Kickmas" sweepstakes grand prize. This first mobile-meets-retail contest awarded users with entries simply for walking in to shopkick's partner retailers, including select Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters, Sports Authority, Wet Seal, and Simon Property Group mall locations from Black Friday through Christmas Eve, 2010.

"I will have to rent a truck so I can pick up all the items I will get with my prize, from Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle, Sports Authority and Wet Seal," said Eric S. "Being the Grand Prize winner of shopkick's first sweepstakes is awesome; my second Christmas begins now!"

The sweepstakes awarded more than 12,000 winners during the holiday season, and had millions of entries. According to Kickmas submissions, the peak shopping day was December 23, when 343,450 entries were registered.

The shopkick benefits extend well beyond the holiday shopping season. Everyday, shopkick users can access exclusive discount offers and earn high-value rewards simply for walking in to more than 1,100 individual stores across multiple retailers and 100 of the country's largest malls. In addition, shopkick offers rewards for "scanning products from leading brands, including Kraft Foods, Procter & Gamble, HP and Intel at hundreds of thousands of locations nationwide.

"Through the 12 Days of Kickmas, thousands of shopkick users experienced first hand how amazing it is to walk into a shopkick partner store and be welcomed and rewarded on their smartphone immediately.  shopkick rewards foot traffic in a way retail has never before been able to," said shopkick Co-Founder and CEO, Cyriac Roeding. "12 Days of Kickmas was a special occasion, but every day our retail partners reward shoppers simply for visiting with shopkick's innovative technology. It shows great commitment to the customer, and provides unparalleled opportunity for customer engagement."

Through the shopkick application, retailers can offer high-value rewards called "kickbucks" because the shopkick Signal – emitted from a patent-pending device located in each participating store – is picked up by the user's shopkick and that verifies the shoppers' presence in-store.

kickbucks earned can be redeemed for in-store gift card rewards or discounts at top retail partner locations, song downloads, movie tickets, hotel vouchers, Facebook Credits to play games online, donations to 30 different causes and charities and more. And, because the detection occurs on the user's mobile device, the privacy of presence information is completely under the user's control.

The shopkick App is available for free on the iPhone from the App Store at www.itunes.com/appstore/ and on Android Market at http://shopkick.com/android.html.

About shopkick (www.shopkick.com)

shopkick is a new Palo Alto-based startup funded by Kleiner Perkins's iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga. shopkick, Inc. brings the power of the mobile internet to the retail experience. shopkick launched its mobile application CauseWorld in the United States in December 2009, in partnership with Citi, Kraft Foods and Procter & Gamble, which became the fastest-growing location-based retail app in the App Store within weeks. In August 2010, shopkick launched its flagship service by the same name, the first mobile application that hands rewards and offers to consumers simply for walking into stores and malls. In partnership with Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle, Sports Authority and Simon Property Group, the largest mall operator in the United States, shopkick introduced its free iPhone application, and immediately reached national coverage by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, ABC, NBC, CNBC, Fox, CNN, TechCrunch, Business Insider and most other major news outlets. The free shopkick app is available for the iPhone and Android.

SOURCE shopkick