Mobile commerce will nearly double to $6.7 billion this year -- fueled by rising smartphone adoption and growing mobile Web use, according to a new eMarketer forecast. The market research firm estimates m-commerce sales will leap another 73% in 2012 to $11.6 billion.
“Mobile commerce is growing at a fast clip -- and it’s acting as an engine of overall e-commerce growth, by converting potential brick-and-mortar sales to digital sales as consumers use their smartphones while shopping in-store,” said eMarketer principal analyst Jeffrey Grau,
EMarketer forecasts that 37.5 million U.S. consumers ages 14 and over will make at least one purchase on their mobile phone next year, up from 26.8 million this year. Nearly all those buying via mobile will be smartphone owners, at 97% in 2012.
However, in the rush to jump on the bandwagon and join in with this critical new channel, they are forgetting to educate their own employees, and it is hurting the efficacy of any efforts that they are making.
After all, mobile isn’t just new to companies and their marketing campaigns. It’s new to consumers, too. Many of them haven’t had their smartphones for more than a few months, and they’re still discovering what is possible. Though they may have heard of the popular services that businesses are joining by the thousands, these consumers may not yet know how to make them work on their own devices.
Equally, if QR codes are being posted on advertising, signage, or menus as a part of a mobile commerce campaign, then it is important to make sure that the staff – especially those who will be interacting with the customers that could be using those barcodes – understand what they are and that they can be scanned with smartphones when a scanning app has been installed on the device. That simple information can be enough to encourage its use by the consumer.
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"Unique Visitors" increased as much as 218% with the average being 147%
More and more, consumers are becoming comfortable using retailers'
mobile optimized websites and rich apps for iPhone, Android and
BlackBerry devices. It makes it easy for them to search, browse and buy,
to find the closest retail location and also when in the store to scan
products to see product details, ratings and reviews, and product
videos.
PayPal predicted that 67% percent of consumers plan to make a
purchase via mobile this holiday season.
ipad users make up 68% of all mobile shoppers
iPad users were also found to have significantly higher conversion rates than other mobile devices. The iPad conversion rate was 1.5 percent, when compared to 0.57 percent among other forms of mobile device.
64 percent of American consumers can remember seeing television ads that included social media and QR code symbols such as those for “likes” on Facebook.
33 percent of consumers in the United States have gone on to interact with the social media that was shown on television after having seen it.
This survey included 1,000 respondents. Most of those participants said that they had noticed the use of social media on television and were aware of the ways in which they could interact with those various social networks, including the “Like” symbol for Facebook (42 percent), QR codes (28 percent), the Hashtags for Twitter (18 percent), and Shazam symbols (9 percent).
• 32 percent, to obtain promotion codes and coupons
• 31 percent, to enter a sweepstakes or contest
• 26 percent, to view a video
• 26 percent, to use social media to interact with the product or program
• 21 percent, to connect with other people who are also interested in the product or program
• 20 percent, to recommend or share the program or product
• 16 percent, to buy a product or service through the social network or QR code.
It suggested that 34 percent of smartphone users have bought a product or service with their mobile device, whereas only 20 percent of standard phone users had done the same.
Across all of these device users, there has been an 8 percent increase in interest for using a mobile device as a part of the overall shopping experience and to make a purchase over the last two years. Again, among both feature phone and smartphone users, 38 percent feel that being able to buy products using a mobile device is at least somewhat important. In this, smartphones feel more strongly that this is the case, as 59 percent of them believe that it is as least somewhat important to be able to buy something using the device.
mong the 500 owners of small businesses who were respondents in the survey, 14 percent have a mobile website that is unique from their standard site. From that group, 84 percent stated that “they have seen an increase in new business activity due to their mobile marketing efforts.”
The smartphone shopping share rose from 13.3 percent in Q1, to 15.1 percent in Q2.
During the same time period, sales made through social media dropped to 1.9 percent, from having been 2.4 percent. The mobile marketing numbers from the Online Retail Sales Index from IBM showed that the overall positive feeling regarding social media fell to 18.6 percent from 25.1 percent.