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Nearly 20 percent of retailers plan to at least pilot an M-commerce project by the end of 2009, according to an RIS study published in May 2009 called "M-Commerce: Retail in Motion." This finding and others in the study were referenced by many media outlets and retail sources at the time, because it showed a surprisingly high level of interest among retailers for an emerging channel.

Several technology firms targeting retail segment such as Microsoft, Cisco and Google and leading retailers are already testing ideas with this AR concept. Although none have been successful yet, few of the products / concepts such as high capacity mobile computing (e.g. iPhone & DROID) and Microsoft’s ‘Project Natal’   seem to be promising to take this technology mainstream in the near future. 

The presentation explained why mobile retail is important, who the "mobile shopper" is (surprisingly, not just techno geeks!), what exactly we mean by "mobile retail," and how you can leverage mobile in your own retail operations.

A start-up called Shopkick Inc., for example, has signed up Best Buy Co. and Macy's Inc. as launch partners for a new kind of app for iPhone and Android handsets that detects when shoppers are in or near stores and offers rewards targeted to them. Shopkick exploits the phones' location-sensing abilities—and cameras that customers can use to scan bar codes on items—to offer product information, coupons or other marketing offers when shoppers are in a convenient position to buy.

Last week, we learned that Apple would be revamping some US retail stores, including a new iPod touch-based point-of-sale (POS) system. A new scanner accessory allows Apple to replace the old Windows CE-based sales handhelds.

“A lot of consumers used mobile as a price-comparison shopping tool—mobile price-comparison and geolocation features show promise for retailers.”

The mobile-phone transaction increase supports the assertion that buyers shopping at brick-and-mortar stores were price-checking products with their mobile phones and then buying items wherever they were least expensive.

Store revival in retail will require a monumental shift in the retailer’s mindset for overhauling customer’s destination shopping experience, personalized marketing, and even personalized merchandise mix.

Mophie, a popular retailer of Apple iPhone and iPod accessories, is set to debut their iPhone credit card reader — said to be named “Credit Card reader” — and complimentary processing application. This will allow merchants to accept credit card payments by swiping the card through a special iPhone case.

Social networking was found to fail to have any meaning influence on purchase decisions, although it was still viewed as helpful by shoppers, especially Gen Y.

Once inside stores, self-checkout is the most widely adopted technology used (71%),

Handheld scanners, kiosks for swiping loyalty cards to receive personalized coupons and touch screen signage showed high interest.

"Mobile will become the center of your digital channel relationships," Harteveldt said, pointing to 36% of smartphone users who access the Web daily from their devices. One in four use the device to research products they will buy either online or offline. The heavy lifting needed to become an effective multichannel marketer often involves eliminating silo operations; aggregating, analyzing and acting on consumer-profile data from across the company; and integrating online and offline consumer marketing, sales and service.

In a grab for young male consumers, Pizza Hut is using social media and mobile connected devices to partner with Electronic Arts Sports and other video game companies, fight night and films such as Terminator 4.

Forrester reports that online captured 29% of consumers' reported general merchandise retail spending in the second quarter of 2009. Half of all online Americans participate in social networks, a number that has increased 46% in the past year.

People have long shared product opinions with friends and family through word-of-mouth. Today, social media tools enable consumers to extend their connections and conduct commerce in powerful new ways.

Social network users are a highly coveted group of consumers. Across all age brackets, they were more likely than average to make an online purchase, according to a May 2009 survey by Anderson Analytics. What’s more, social network users are sharing recommendations with greater frequency than generally expected. A Q1 2009 Razorfish survey of social network users found that some 29% reported sharing their views online at least every few weeks, while 10% said they made such contributions at least every few days.

In this article we ‘ll review the present state of the market, the key App Store building blocks and where will the market be heading in two years.

And while technical openness was established 7 years ago, what was lacking all these years was commercial openness; the funnel between external developers and in-market handsets was so thin that very few software players could pass through. It took Symbian six years to reach 10,000 applications, while it took Apple only 6 months (see our earlier analysis). In the first year of operation, Apple’s App Store brought in 65,000+ apps, 100,000 registered developers, 1.5Billion application downloads and availability to consumers across 77 countries through 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch devices sold.

n this historical context, it is easy to see that App Stores are a developer-to-consumer merchandising channel; a go-to-market vehicle for allowing consumers to distribute and retail their applications directly to the end-consumers, while taking out the middlemen from distribution and retailing.

According to the report, more than one mobile subscriber in 10 in developed regions will use mobile coupons by 2014. As a result, Juniper is confidently forecasting that consumer usage of mobile coupons could potentially generate upwards of $6 billion globally in retail redemption value by 2014.

ARPU from NFC coupons and smart posters will exceed ARPU from NFC payment transactions The vast majority of mobile coupon redemption value will be generated by the Far East & China, Western Europe and North America in 2014

According to Muse, ShopSavvy currently boasts over 3 million users who are on average performing 26 product scans per month.  These are impressive statistics when you consider that the application is available for only one platform at the moment.  But another interesting statistic, especially for retailers, is that 91% of scans are performed by users who are in a store and in “buy mode”.  

The application itself is compelling enough to the current crowd of Android owners - 75% of them have installed and used ShopSavvy.

increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, and create ongoing customer conversations

Consumers’ greater willingness to shop on the mobile channel rather than buy is supported by other research. Retrevo found in February 2010 that across all age groups Internet users were at least three times as likely to research or compare prices on their phones as they were to make a purchase.