AT&T Inc. will provide free in-store Wi-Fi at Barnes & Noble Inc. at locations nationwide, it said on Tuesday. The two will also launch a mobile promotion campaign.
While AT&T has provided hotspots at Barnes & Noble since 2005, now it’s free to anyone that walks into the store. Shoppers can also opt-in to get coupons to the in-store café, notices on an author book signings or details on where to find a new book release in their favorite genre.
The bookstore is using the access as a way to promote its eBook offerings as well. All customers shopping in Barnes & Noble stores can now freely download and preview any of the more than 700,000 eBook titles with hundreds of thousands of public domain titles available from Google.
“This is a natural progression of our digital strategy to provide customers with more choices in how, when and where they want to read,” said Steve Riggio, CEO of Barnes & Noble.
Customers can also download free Barnes & Noble Apps giving them access to exclusive content, customer reviews, information about in-store events, store locations, video interviews with authors, events calendars and other info. A special application for iPhone lets customers use the the iPhone’s camera to snap a photo of a front cover to retrieve product details, editorial reviews and customer ratings, and find and reserve a copy in the nearest store.
