The Melt, a fast-casual restaurant chain specializing in grilled cheese sandwiches, has adopted the Perka platform to create a mobile loyalty program called “The Melt Perks.”

Using the Perka app as a mobilized punchcard, consumers can earn a free melt for every nine they purchase via mobile or the company web site. Loyal customers also are able to earn the “Perks+” status when they buy at least one melt in five separate orders within 30 consecutive days.

To better reach consumers across demographics and geographic borders, retailers are expanding their brands with e-Commerce sites that reach around the world.

Crabtree & Evelyn, a bath, body and home fragrance brand and retailer, has embraced this go-to-market strategy with a cloud-based e-Commerce platform from Demandware. The luxury products company has re-launched the U.S. web site using Demandware Commerce to respond faster to shifting consumer e-Commerce trends, provide an improved user experience and extend digital commerce to mobile users.

The Shopper Marketing Summit, a retail networking event hosted in April 2013 by the Path to Purchase Institute, focused on collaboration, in-store activation, digital and omnichannel strategies, shopper engagement and more.

“Today's shoppers are better-informed and less brand loyal than their predecessors,” said Peter Hoyt, Executive Director and CEO of the Path to Purchase Institute, in an interview with Supermarket News. “They have greater access to, and more control over, the information they need to make purchase decisions, and this self-learning now extends into the shopping trip itself via mobile devices. Marketers can no longer be content that their mass media advertising has done the job of effectively building brand awareness, so it has become more important than ever to 'close the sale' in the retail environment.”