Mobile-assist­ed in-store shop­ping is on the rise, as evi­denced by recent efforts from brands like Tar­get, Wal­mart, Macy’s and Lowe’s. These ini­tia­tives include maps and enhanced search func­tion­al­i­ty, which, in turn, help con­sumers find what they want as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. And, at the end of the day, this could also help brands cut through some of the noise this hol­i­day sea­son and increase sales.

Mobile shop­per engage­ment com­pa­ny Point Inside announced sev­er­al new in-store nav­i­ga­tion fea­tures in the app for retail­er Tar­get includ­ing inter­ac­tive maps, as well as “enhanced” shop­ping lists and search capa­bil­i­ties. Fur­ther, Tar­get will be using the inter­ac­tive maps to pro­vide the pre­cise loca­tions of its door­buster Black Fri­day deals for each of its 1800 U.S. loca­tions.

Tar­get is using Point Inside’s Store­mode plat­form, which helps retail­ers bet­ter engage with cus­tomers in stores, accord­ing to Pete Cole­man, exec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent and gen­er­al man­ag­er at Point Inside. For exam­ple, the inter­ac­tive maps over­lay item loca­tions as pins on store maps – includ­ing inven­to­ry avail­abil­i­ty in real-time, Cole­man said.

Part of the work that goes into the inter­ac­tive maps is get­ting the phys­i­cal con­text of each store – which Point Inside refers to as “ground truth” – and this helps answer the two most impor­tant ques­tions for con­sumers: “Do you have it and where can I find it?” Cole­man said.

“Each store is like a snowflake and has its own unique nuances,” he added.

In addi­tion, shop­ping lists pro­vide a pro­duc­t’s aisle loca­tion in a giv­en store and link direct­ly to the inter­ac­tive maps, and type-ahead, auto-com­plete func­tion­al­i­ty enables guests to quick­ly add items to their shop­ping lists.

The shop­ping list fea­ture mim­ics con­sumer behav­ior when cre­at­ing lists because con­sumers write down gener­ic items rather than spe­cif­ic brand names when they are com­pil­ing hand­writ­ten shop­ping lists, accord­ing to Cole­man. That means retail­ers can pro­vide maps/lists with­out forc­ing con­sumers to “browse down through a tree to iden­ti­fy a spe­cif­ic prod­uct,” Cole­man said. “We’ve seen shop­pers not have the patience to do that.”

These fea­tures launched with Target’s iPhone app, but will be avail­able for Android “very soon,” Cole­man said.

Point Inside sees mobile as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to real­ly go inside the store and assist with clos­ing sales with­in the store and inspir­ing shop­pers “where over 90 per­cent of sales are hap­pen­ing today still in 2014,” Cole­man said.

In turn, retail­ers gain knowl­edge about shop­per behav­ior and what’s trend­ing in each store, which can help in mer­chan­diz­ing and ful­fill­ment, Cole­man said.

“I think broad­ly about the indus­try, every retail­er is excit­ed about this tech­nol­o­gy because shop­pers have already kind of vot­ed. The jury’s in – they are using devices in store,” Cole­man said. “This tech­nol­o­gy answers those two ques­tions [Do you have it and where can I find it?].”

In addi­tion, when it comes to in-store search, Cole­man said apps have his­tor­i­cal­ly yield­ed results from a retailer’s ecom­merce sys­tem, which includes every­thing they have in their ware­hous­es.

“But [the cus­tomer] took the time to dri­ve to the store. They are there and ready to buy, so our phi­los­o­phy and what you see is store-spe­cif­ic search…which makes the uni­verse of results come from what’s in that store that day,” Cole­man said.

In addi­tion to Tar­get, Cole­man said Point Inside is work­ing with home improve­ment chain Lowe’s, as well as super­mar­ket chain Mei­jer, along with about a dozen oth­er brands.

While Lowe’s has uti­lized Point Inside tech­nol­o­gy for about a year, it recent­ly upped the in-store ante with “autonomous retail ser­vice robots” in a Cal­i­for­nia loca­tion to “study how robot­ics tech­nol­o­gy can ben­e­fit cus­tomers and employ­ees.”

Like Target’s maps and lists, the robots, called OSH­bots, will “assist cus­tomers to quick­ly nav­i­gate stores by direct­ing them to spe­cif­ic prod­ucts and pro­vid­ing real-time infor­ma­tion about prod­uct pro­mo­tions and inven­to­ry,” accord­ing to a press release, adding that OSH­bot will even­tu­al­ly be able to com­mu­ni­cate with cus­tomers in mul­ti­ple lan­guages and remote­ly con­nect with employ­ees at oth­er stores to answer ques­tions.

“Using sci­ence-fic­tion pro­to­typ­ing, we explored solu­tions to improve cus­tomer expe­ri­ences by help­ing cus­tomers quick­ly find the prod­ucts and infor­ma­tion they came in look­ing for,” said Kyle Nel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of Lowe’s Inno­va­tion Labs, in a state­ment.

Wal­mart, too, added a “Search My Store” fea­ture to its app ear­li­er this year. Search My Store allows cus­tomers to search a par­tic­u­lar Wal­mart store for “near­ly any item” and will help cus­tomers find the items they need more quick­ly and make shop­ping at Wal­mart “eas­i­er, faster and more acces­si­ble,” accord­ing to a Wal­mart blog post by Vice Pres­i­dent of Mobile and Dig­i­tal Strat­e­gy Wendy Bergh.

“Think of it as a per­son­al shop­ping asso­ciate for your local Wal­mart, always with you when­ev­er you need it,” Bergh wrote.

Urban Out­fit­ters was also report­ed­ly installing bea­cons in select stores in order to send mes­sages to shop­pers with the Urban Out­fit­ters app when they enter the store and go into fit­ting rooms.

Fur­ther, accord­ing to Ad Age, Macy’s teamed up with Google to allow con­sumers to search for items on their phones to see what is in stock near them. The prod­uct infor­ma­tion will include details like price, size, and col­or, as well as direc­tions to the store by uti­liz­ing Google’s prox­im­i­ty mar­ket­ing plat­form.

This video from Google+ Your Busi­ness explains more about the Macy’s effort, as well as a case study from Think with Google, which says con­sumers are vis­it­ing stores less dur­ing hol­i­day vis­its but are “bet­ter informed about what they [want] when enter­ing the store” so “each trip [is] more pur­pose­ful.”

Fur­ther, accord­ing to Think with Google’s Dig­i­tal Impact On In-Store Shop­ping study, brands are offer­ing strate­gies like in-store pick­up for items bought online, home deliv­ery of prod­ucts pur­chased in-store and prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty at near­by stores in search results, which yield bet­ter expe­ri­ences for shop­pers and boost the bot­tom line.

The Think with Google case study cites Macy’s vice pres­i­dent of mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy, Ser­e­na Pot­ter, who says the retail­er makes sure its local store inven­to­ry is vis­i­ble to con­sumers brows­ing its web­site or Google Search via Google Local Inven­to­ry Ads, which con­nect shop­pers with infor­ma­tion about the prod­ucts they seek.

“We can tell her that there are eight of what she wants in her size and desired col­or avail­able right now in the store that’s five blocks away,” Pot­ter said.

What’s more, ear­li­er this year, in-store mobile mar­ket­ing plat­form aisle411 announced func­tion­al­i­ty that will allow shop­pers using Google’s Project Tan­go, which, per a release, is a tech­nol­o­gy used for cre­at­ing 3D maps of indoor spaces with the abil­i­ty to show a user’s pre­cise loca­tion and ori­en­ta­tion, to search for and nav­i­gate to prod­uct loca­tions.

Per the release, the com­bined prod­uct allows users to find spe­cif­ic prod­ucts in a 3D aug­ment­ed real­i­ty expe­ri­ence inside the store.

Aisle411 users can also dis­cov­er per­son­al­ized coupons, offers and rewards that pop out of the shelf along their in-store route, as well as col­lect loy­al­ty rewards for walk­ing down aisles. Aisle411 did not respond to a request for com­ment. How­ev­er, per this video, Aisle411 is work­ing with brands like drug store chain Wal­greens.

Mall map­ping efforts arent entire­ly new. Search engine Bing has had mobile maps for malls since at least 2011. Google Maps, too, has offered mall maps.

What do you think of these mobile map­ping and in-store search efforts so far? Will they be effec­tive in attract­ing hol­i­day shop­pers?