Mobile has been personal to consumers and being web-enabled this media has been ever evolving to be explored by marketers. At the onset of 2012, Mobile commerce has taken off to an unprecedented degree. Retail markets along with other top eCommerce platforms are experimenting to give their consumers the best shopping experience.
Let us explore the top mCommerce trends in 2012.
- Point of sale – NFC and Cellphones
- Business Perspective of Social Media
- Smart Phone Sales are UP!
Technology is moving faster than consumers’ comfort levels. [Read my last post to understand the basic difference between NFC v/s QR Code v/s Bar Code]. Every 3-6 months there is something new. We need to wait and watch what stays as its directly proportional to its consumerization. NFC (Near-Field-Communication) chip making us fast approaching the time when the bulk of our purchases will be made via the Mobile phones.
As more and more people do mobile banking, there’ll be more purchasing with mobile phones and the new technologies (NFC enabled Google Wallet | Intuit Gopayment etc.) are making their way in biggest retail markets across globe.
Does your marketing strategy allows you to not only sell products through social media, but also create brand ambassadors from consumers themselves? Top retailers have understood this and they are on it 24×7. Sumana Samuk, a Social Media expert, explains this in her interview with Business Today, “At times, people get so possessive about a brand that they come to the brand’s defence when someone else criticises it”.
Mobile enables marketers to be interactive with their consumers on a real time basis. But there are some dirty little secrets of the game. First of all are all your followers are serious followers? Nope, there are only 40% of your followers who are genuine. Another dirty secret is about how many of your followers/fans are on it all the time? Twitter feeds, for example stream fast, but are all last 100 tweets are dead tweets? Not really, believe me! Twitteratis are always on it. Among those genuine followers, a very small percentage is actually reading posts as it goes live on your page or twitter stream as others tweet. So how small is this small percentage? Its significant, especially when mobile has made this number of your fans/followers to growing every passing minute. A comScore study says, Mobile Social Networking Audience Grew 44 Percent Over Past Year in EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom).
So, when did you or your agency last monitor your Twitter on a Sunday evening and respond to a complaint in real time?
Above two trends make it obvious that the Smartphones sales are going up and 2012 will see more of this. Biggest show stealer in 2011 are Android phones with (I don’t wana say its coz of Angry Birds though)… and ofcourse Apple’s iOS is not behind. Here are some figures:
Source:
comScore Reports November 2011 U.S. Mobile Subscriber
Gartner’s Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System
Android, being on Open Standards, allow vendors to deliver Android-based devices and continue to fight for market share. More a reason for customer’s rejoice as prices will further decrease. Android is going to maintain its strong position at all ends of the market through 2014. Greatest volume opportunity for all major players in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in evolving markets. Wondering, if everyone’s favourite Apple is listening!!
