Mobile apps still seem to be that white whale many operators can’t bag. That was clear during an education session at the RLC when question after question was posed to a panel of operators whose chains were in three different places in terms of their app development.
One question stood out: What were the panelists’ thoughts on a bilingual app, seeing that the Hispanic population is growing exponentially?
Surprisingly, none felt the need for a Spanish-speaking app. Doug Reifschneider, VP of marketing at Firehouse Subs, said that Firehouse’s main audience is millennial and Gen X males, alluding to a mostly English-speaking base. Zoes Kitchen’s VP of Marketing Rachel Phillips-Luther expressed a similar sentiment, saying that Zoes’ key targets are women.
Both made a good argument against adding it. The point of an app is to be useful to your audience, said Phillips-Luther. If the main audience isn’t going to use a feature (such as Spanish-language translations), what’s the point of wasting time, energy and money to build it into the system?
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