What Is M-retailing?

By Author: Kelly Burby
Total Articles: 349

It would not be wrong if we say that there has been a tremendous boom in mobile technology in previous years. Every domain in the business world has now been covered by it from mobile banking to m-retailing, to entertainment, to education. The researches about the use of mobile technologies in and around shopping experiences over past two years speak that 60% of smart-phone users in the US make use of their phones for taking accurate purchasing decisions while shopping,.

The direct impact on business

Price comparing mobile applications have knocked out those traditional brick-and-mortar retail stores. Few years back, consumers had to visit various stores for comparing the price of a particular item. Today, a few minutes of shuffling over smart-phone applications makes it done. Thus the mobile retailing stores have several impacts over business. Lets have a look over the two major ones:

When they know more, they eventually buy more: Smart-phone applications let the customer know more about the current trends and things in market, one would love to opt. Relevant information is consistently pushed to be opted by customers, which has a direct link with purchasing decisions. In other words, better information leads to more sales.

Enhanced customer satisfaction: Customers have a tendency of rewarding businesses which meet their needs for information and services. Mobile retailing allows increased personalization which turns into enhanced the satisfaction of customers with meeting their needs at best.

Benefits of going mobile

Mobile Payments are more efficient for users: Mobile payments or say point-of-sale (POS) terminals cut-down the transaction-time consumed for cash payments to half its way, and those done with cards turn it five times faster. Mobile checkouts even simplify the redemption process of coupons received on the devices.

Numerous Rewards and discounts over times: Consumers having such apps installed on their devices keep receiving alerts regarding special discounts and promotional offers while entering the store. This apparently minimizes the scope of comparing prizes for consumers, which is always a plus to the retailers.

While most of the retailers are going mobile, some of them are even having a share with cellphone carriers to reach their audience. For instance, the “Shopkick” application, launched in August last year, was developed by Cyriac Roeding, Jeff Sellinger and Aaron Emigh. This application provides “kickbucks” as points to its consumers for their presence in a specific store. These points can be further redeemed for gift cards, Facebook Game credits or charitable donations.

Big Brands are joining the Game: All those branded retailers are grouping up with mobile application developers for being a part of the competition with mobile retailing. And for this reason they are coming up with some unconventional marketing strategies.

Best Buy, the electronic retail outlet, is trying to tie up with a UK based mobile banking and payment service for establishing its new marketing strategy. Their app would probably help consumers with transactions. The app, for now being named as Mobile Money Market would allow users finish their transaction just by inserting their product code itself.

Hence, in the race of technology, consumers are always on the winning side with lots of options to choose from.