The surprisingly simple retail app that could juice holiday revenue

Retailers still love those glossy advertising circulars stuffed into Sunday papers; consumers do, too. The actual print newspapers themselves, however, have lost their luster with both advertisers and readers.

So, according to Bloomberg, retailers have launched a free app, dubbed Retale, that digitizes those ads and presents products and prices to users in a format that resembles the colorful circulars. It just doesn’t do much more than that.

The lack of interaction is intentional. Allowing users to tap-and-buy, scan QR codes, compare prices online or gather reward points for purchases keeps shoppers on their couches and out of stores and driving shoppers into stores is why retailers use circulars to begin with. So far, 17 U.S. retailers are featured on Retale.

Read more from Bloomberg Businessweek.