Mobile Commerce Minute

 

Retailers are doing a better job of bringing shoppers into their stores according to Euclid Analytics. This is GREAT news right? Well...Most shoppers are more educated, make targeted decisions while in the store and leave much faster. Great news if you understand what they want and how to provide that experience. Not so great news if you are burying your head in the sand like many are doing.

Despite 2013 being - in earnest - the year mobile commerce emerged and set record upon record upon record for mobile spending, retailers left money on the table. Not just a little bit of money either. According to Jumio, $16 billion (BILLION) was lost due to various reasons we detail in this episode. $16 BILLION! You'd better watch...

With 800 million registered accounts in China there is not really another company on the planet who can give an assessment on the future of mobile commerce other than Alipay. Chuck met with Jingming Li, the Chief Architect at the company and got his thoughts on the state of the industry.

Adoption of mobile payments and mobile commerce require gateway industries to embrace them so we all become comfortable using them. A perfect example of this is the gas pump - we all use them, we all need them and they are among the first to commit to the latest and greatest technologies and concepts that we now think are common. Services like pre-pay, tap-and-go payments, loyalty cards and co-marketing initiatives. Whether we know it or not, gas stations are the litmus test for a ton of experiments that have gone mainstream. So it shouldn't surprise us that they are now heavily experimenting with a great combination of the pump, the screen, your mobile device and merchandise. Take a look at this Gilbarco Veeder-Root initiative and you'll see another innovation from the gas pump that may hasten our use of mobile wallets.

More convenient than cash. That has to be the mantra for mobile commerce providers today. It has to be more convenient than using cash. Consumers aren't going to change their behaviours to accommodate new technology - at first. The gap between cash and mobile is so great that jumping from one to the other may be too much of a leap for most. This is why Loop is so interesting. Is this the transitory payment tech that brings it to the mobile side? You decide.

Remember when you saw your first QR code on a screen? Quick! Pull out your phone, launch your QR code scanning software, scan the code - whoops, too late. Well, an innovative company from France called Think & Go may have just solved two challenges: The complexity of the QR code AND what to use NFC for.

Recent research from Equation Research on behalf of marketing firm Vibes details the habits of smartphone shoppers and browsers. The results showcase the key to understanding how and when consumers make their buy decisions and how and when and by what means retailers should be reaching out to them to help the process.

We all know that mobile influences much of how, what and when we buy but just to make sure and remove all doubt we've got more proof. Custora, a predictive analytics company for ecommerce marketing teams, released their results from 100 retailers over the Nov-Dec holiday shopping season. Care to wager what it said?

Have you ever noticed how many screens there are around us? Aside from what you are watching this on. Aside from your smartphone, your television set, your second television set, your tablet or your ereader. There are screens everywhere and, until almost right this moment in time, they have been broadcasting TO you but that is about to change in dramatic fashion. Here's why.

 

**The title credit goes to "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band**

The car was prominent at CES this year and all of the manufacturers are aggressively going after the captive consumer. Once a cabin owned by radio, the car is now being infiltrated by software, hardware and service companies alike. What does the future look like with a connected phone and a connected car? Here's a glimpse.