Supermarket giant Food Lion and Concentrics Restaurants are running mobile-social marketing programs to drive foot traffic to their bricks-and-mortar locations and encourage customer loyalty.

With the rise of mobile usage comes the flood of mobile marketing firms peddling their services and proclaiming they alone are the next big thing. But how much of this is legit, and how much of this is modern day snake oil?

AT&T is creating the Location Information Services platform to help businesses and organizations with mobile initiatives improve productivity and have better visibility into their assets.

Digital and social media marketing, the advent of cloud computing and the explosion of mobile technology have all had a profound effect on the way marketers and consumers do business.

Marketers are tapping location-based services to compel customers to use apps to engage with the brand, product or venue via their mobile phone. They need to know the three R’s of LBS.

What if you owned a small restaurant and I could generate $160,000 for you with just two location-based mobile campaigns?

AT&T has launched a rewards program via location-based mobile game SCVNGR to drive consumers to its retail locations.

Thirty-nine percent of on-the-go consumers are interested in receiving coupons for nearby stores through mobile devices, according to JiWire.

Two years ago, Foursquare launched its location-based service and since then the number of companies offering similar check-in software has grown into a micro but popular industry.

CheckPoints, a mobile startup in the location-based retail category, closed a $1 million Series A financing round from the cofounders, brothers Mark and Todd DiPaola.