Shopkick and Retail Mobile Rewards

Just in time for the holiday season, we are seeing location based ad/rewards systems take off on the Android Platform.  The latest one to announce a new location based rewards system is a company called “shopkick“.  Kind of a foursquare like system for shopping, users can check in to different retail stores that have special transmitters installed that connect with a free app for your Android device.

Once downloaded users earn rewards when entering participating stores and by scanning barcodes.  Rewards in the form of “kickbucks’ can be redeemed in store for a number of things.  Read on after the break to find out more.

Rewards can be redeemed for gift card rewards, music downloads, and facebook credits (for playing games).  Shopkick also offers donation of your kickbucks to over 30 different charitable organizations.  Earning the kickbucks can be as simple as walking into a store with the app on your device, or scanning a bar code of a product that the app tells you to.

You can also earn more  kickbucks by purchasing items from specific retailers, trying on clothes or testing out a new PC.

Shopkick retailers are currently only in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco, with limited support in Houston, Miami, Minneapolis and San Diego. But by Black Friday over 1,000 stores in 100 of the largest malls will be participating, with more coming all the time.

This could be an interesting concept, and can be seen as another step towards monetizing location on mobile devices.

While your out this holiday season picking up stuff for everyone else, why not earn a little something for yourself?