www.roanoke.com

How many times while shopping have you tried to find a certain item, but you didn’t know where it was?

In time for the holiday season, Roanoke's Valley View Mall now is offering shoppers the chance to search for a particular item by using their cell phones. By texting “VLV” to 632729 (nearby), you can receive instructions via cell phone of how to search for specific items and sales information at the mall stores.

This new service, also available at River Ridge Mall in Lynchburg, is offered by NearbyNow, a company that provides Internet and mobile search technology.

Valley View has an extensive product search function on its Web site, but mobile searching gives you the opportunity to find items while you’re out and about and not near a computer.

This move is in line with efforts by other retailers lately to communicate with customers via mobile phones. J.C. Penney gave customers who signed up a wake-up call on Black Friday. Nordstrom and Wal-Mart are sending off text messages about sales and other discounts.
Some of these services are holiday exclusive.

I haven’t signed up for these mobile offerings, but I plan to test some of them out. If you’ve tried them, let me know what you think.