Mobile commerce comes of age
Mobile commerce is by no means a new phenomenon; it’s been around for the last decade. Until recently, however, mobile commerce for many was more a concept than an actual reality. It’s something that has grown rapidly over the last few years, with its influence increasing exponentially in the global consumer marketplace. This growth has been highlighted by an ever-increasing amount of research looking at the development of the mobile market, showing a genuine and tangible growth that no one can ignore. Gartner, for example, has found that 428 million mobile communication devices were sold worldwide in the first quarter of 2011 while, according to IDC, this same timeframe saw the global mobile phone market grow by 19.8%. Today there are roughly 4.6 billion mobile users, many of whom are purchasing goods via this medium.
Golden Opportunity
Mobile commerce isn’t just growing, it’s also maturing. Smartphone and tablet technology has taken off rapidly, offering the power of the PC to many people on the move. According to IDC, the global smartphone market is on pace to grow 55% in 2011, while it is predicted that global tablet shipments will also increase from 16.1 million units in 2010 to 147.2 million units in 2015 (Infinite Research). What’s more, comprehensive 3G and the proliferation of quality wi-fi is improving the user experience – providing better connectivity and user experience than ever before. The result is a golden opportunity: businesses and brands can tap into a new, sizeable audience that has grown up with mobile technology and has a day-to-day dependency on it.
Location Based Services (LBS) is one area within mobile commerce showing real momentum. There’s now a whole host of device information (battery life, access to Wi-Fi, signal strength) that can help ensure interaction and marketing outreach only takes place when the situation is exactly right for the consumer. Imagine having an offer appear on your mobile for discounted lunch at your favourite restaurant, just down the road from where you are located. From a marketing perspective it’s hugely exciting: a brand, once it has full permission to connect with a consumer via their mobile, can deliver content and promotions tailored to individual preferences and anticipated behaviour in a way we’ve never seen before.
Key considerations
However, for businesses and brands looking to harness this opportunity effectively there are issues within mobile commerce that require due care and attention. The vast majority of consumers have not yet become accustomed to brands entering the very personal environment that is their mobile phones. Employing the wrong mobile marketing strategy can be very costly to a brand’s reputation in a tough market where consumers rarely allow second chances. Indeed, mobile commerce has nuisances of its own and companies will be required to think differently to any activities conducted around the transactions of purely physical goods.
One of the issues that must be overcome is privacy. Offering an “opt in” option, where the customer grants permission for a business to obtain and use their transaction and location information, is crucial. This is especially true in light of new privacy legislation in the EU and US that may require consumers to opt-in, resulting in companies that have not actively requested permission from the user having to remove these customers from their database and start fresh, which could prove to be very costly. Getting this right from the outset will save time and money, and is essential in delivering a modern mobile strategy, one that helps establish a brand’s reputation.
Another obvious challenge is that most websites do not yet translate particularly well to mobile phones – with many users experiencing compatibility problems and poor levels of service and satisfaction. The likely result here is that the consumer will simply take their business elsewhere. As companies gradually acclimatise and work to rectify this, they should seek out the resources, already in existence that can optimise mobile content and tailor it according to the specific device of each consumer. HTML5, for example, is enabling developers to make websites more compatible with the mobile format with greater ease – delivering a higher quality, consistent user experience across these devices.
Building Trust
Ultimately, organisations looking to operate in the mobile commerce sphere need to understand the ethical and legal concerns of interacting with users on their personal devices, as customers will gravitate to those brands and businesses they can trust. Integrity, security and clarity have to be central to a company’s ethos, combined with intelligent, targeted marketing strategies and the right technology to build services and applications better and quicker. If the right strategy is taken, there’s no reason why businesses and brands should not harness the growing consumer base increasingly moving its attention towards mobile devices.
