Shopping centre operator Westfield has launched its My Westfield app, which enables retailers to offer personalised offers to shoppers.

Shopping centre operator Westfield has launched its My Westfield app, which enables retailers to offer personalised offers to shoppers.

Once a shopper has downloaded the app they are presented with a series of questions which they can swipe the screen to answer. This 30-second set of questions, Westfield says, leads a customer profile containing over 600 interests, 2,000 brand affinities and 84 pieces of demographic information.

The profile is shown to the customer who can refine it if they want to, and once that is done retailers are free to send targeted offers to that phone. John Lewis, Hobbs and Debenhams have all signed up.

Personalisation is a hot topic at the moment and Westfield has done what few retailers have managed. It is using the shopper’s location – as they need to be in Westfield malls – and their own data to market at them. The shopper is in control of the data, and no personal information is involved. It will be interesting to see how customers respond, and it’s a good example of a shopping centre owner leading the way in mobile innovation. Westfield worked with marketing technology company nFluence.