Sears Holdings Corp.’s Kmart is turning to location-based mobile initiatives to encourage consumer loyalty and repeat purchases during the holiday season.

Family shopping destination Patriot Place is rewarding visitors with gift cards and an iPod shuffle by completing various mobile challenges throughout its 1 million square-foot shopping center.

The Wet Seal Inc. and Target are the latest retailers to tap the location-based mobile rewards and offers craze to drive foot traffic, customer acquisition and loyalty.

Brookshire Grocery Co., one of the largest regional grocery chains in Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas, is offering contactless mobile payments and rewards to its customers.

Carlson Marketing has introduced an instant rewards program that gives marketers the ability to send gift certificates via handsets.

Burger King, Gap, Starbucks and Universal Music Group are driving sales via the new Loopt Star mobile social networking rewards game.

Mobile loyalty and rewards service provider Tetherball has teamed with Vivotech to offer its recently introduced RFID-based mobile loyalty programs to existing users of Vivotech’s contactless reader technology.