The first Mobile Christmas
In the latest Mobile Fix, Simon Andrews, founder of the full service mobile agency addictive!, says the hype is finally coming true…
Christmas Shopping
It’s clear that this is going to be the first Mobile Christmas.
Tesco Direct recently published research suggesting 10% of Brits will do their online Christmas shopping using their mobile phone rather than a computer this year.
This week Vodafone UK chief executive Guy Laurence told a gathering of senior retailers they had “lost control of their shoppers”. He said: “A quarter of people now have internet-enabled phones, but among 16-24-year-olds that figure is 45%.”
So is the hype coming true? Well yes.
In the US a good article in the WSJ talks about how mobile affected Black Friday – the day when Christmas shopping traditionally starts in the US – and talks of how phone wielding shoppers terrify retailers.
On the Friday after Thanksgiving a year ago, consumers using mobile devices accounted for just 0.1% of visits to retail websites, according to Coremetrics, a division of IBM which estimates e-commerce activity. This Black Friday, they accounted for 5.6%, for a 50-fold increase.
And eBay has come up with a new version of Black Friday; Mobile Sunday – when they took $5 million in just one day. Now we know eBay, like Amazon, is already a billion dollar mobile business but this tweet from our friends at ASOS suggest it’s happening over here too.
@ASOS_James: Reading about Mobile Sunday; our profile is similar; Monday just gone was our biggest day ever. 58k UVs to our m. site
Just as Tesco and other high street stores are investing in mobile, we’re seeing the online retailers innovating too – so the future of the high street is in play.
As we’ve talked about before, people like the idea they can wander the high street and compare products, then check prices and with one click buy it on their mobile, and have it delivered. How do retailers fight back?
In grocery, where the retailers are so strong there appears to be little FMCG brands can do, as no-one who is economically interesting will price compare groceries.
How about this billion dollar idea? We know how influential reviews are. And we know that grocery products are now reviewed in more and more places – on Walmart, Ocado, Amazon and others. So why don’t a consortia of big FMCG brands get together and develop a mobile service (apps, mobile web and SMS) that lets people read the reviews of grocery products when they scan them. And they can also check the green credentials of the product.
And the benefit for participating brands is they get to see what products people are scanning, even whilst in the supermarket – and could have the opportunity to serve a coupon – as well as building a newCRM dialogue with people.
Maybe that’s the way to revive the old Jigsaw collaboration around CRM that never really caught on. This idea is a Christmas Gift from us to all our friends in FMCG. (If you want to know more, why not give us a call).
But one thing to consider is that as we move in 2011 with a gloomy economy, will we see deal hunting even reaching the supermarkets? In most countries we know find that people want to get a deal. Whether that’s getting a coupon for a meal at a chain restaurant, a Groupon deal or buying a new suit at a sample sale its the smart way to shop nowadays. And it’s inevitable that mobile will be the key tool people use unlock value – so everyone needs to be thinking about how it might affect them
“I am slightly obsessed with getting the best deal,” says Ms. Saunders, a substitute teacher. “So to me, the bar code scanner is the coolest thing in the world.”
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