Are you really being Personal!!! [Mobi-Commerce]

Modern Retailers are discovering the value of letting customers create their own unique products and thus understanding the potential value of User Generated Content. The use of Big Data to present a personalized set of products to their customers has actually been a driving force behind Brand success. Now, brands are taking personalization to a big step forward into mass customization by discovering that they can elevate customer loyalty and engagement and smart use their customer base as an engine customer acquisition.

Customization also helps companies reach specific consumers—such as the unpredictable Gen-Y shoppers, a group known for their fast- paced preferences. Young shoppers demand more individualized products than their older counterparts. Certainly they are not a “one-size-fits-all” generation. With the booming marketing via social media and online publishing, styles and trends change more rapidly than ever before, forcing sellers to keep up with shifting preferences. Companies that offer customization are able to use consumers as merchants, thus continuously gaining insights from customized designs and fine tuning their products in a feedback loop that helps companies stay one step ahead of the competition. With each new choice, that customers share real-time shopper preferences, that go well beyond what they would say in a focus group.

For example, what Brooks Brothers learns from its customers in one season is systematically used to help it deliver the next season’s product line.

• But certainly there are key factors that a Retailer needs to emphasize on for reaching similar platform. Refining the user experience and delivering a seamless usability and experience with the retail websites [e-commerce] and mobile apps is a bigger challenge.
• Integration of digital channels is a major challenge among consumers. Final conversions often don’t happen on the same platform or even the device where the shopping process was initiated.
• Easy social [media] platform capability of their digital landscape is a must. Every Facebook Like adds value to a Brand today.
• All web information needs to be mobile optimized.

So how important it is to go mobile?

Well, in the past, consumers would spend hours going through the newspaper, cutting out coupons and organizing them by hand. Over the last couple of decades many retailers have provided plastic cards to consumers which give them access to deals and promotions.

But that was all before humanity decided that they will stay hungry and foolish, but be smart with phones.

By mid of 2013, 56% of mobile phones in the United States were smart-phones. To capitalize on this trend retailers have begun providing digital alternatives to physical loyalty cards and coupons by utilizing mobile wallet apps. Not all mobile wallet apps are created equal. Some simply store loyalty cards, some process payments and some include coupons and deals.

For example, Apple’s Passbook allows developers to create loyalty cards or tickets which users can store, but it will not process payments. On the other hand there are apps like ISIS, which not only stores cards but also processes payments. Despite the differences, one thing they all do is store digital versions of some real world object that contains a bar-code, whether that is a loyalty card or a coupon.  

Then the obvious question is, why are retailers still so bad at Mobile?

Well, here are a few factors:

·         

•      Though it’s a profit winning model, still it has yet to emerge because the industry is still in experimentation mode.
•      Very few retailers have created apps on all platforms.
•      Very poor use of rich media like 360 degree product view or even product zoom.
•      Understanding the importance of Social and providing an easy integration for FB like.
•      More emphasis on promotion than loyalty.

Its time to adapt the smart way quickly and seamlessly. More and more consumers in the US are predicted to get on the mobile payment wagon over the next five years, and analysts expect the amount to reach $90 billion by the end of 2017.The time consumers spend on retailer apps has increased by 525% from December 2011 to December 2012.