How Mobile Is Revolutionizing The Retail Industry

It's changing the way retailers do business, and proving to be a daunting transformation for them to manage. We examine what retailers have accomplished so far and where they're headed in the short term.

A year ago STORES.org described mobile technology as game-changing. Research conducted by Ipsos finds that tablet usage increases the frequency of mobile shopping, and suggests that tablet users buy almost twice as much from their mobile devices as smartphone shoppers. Hoping to cash in on this mobile revolution, retailers are experimenting with everything from mobile selling, marketing and clienteling to mobile POS, task management and security monitoring. Over the last year, retailers have tested devices used for guided selling, mobile payments, task management and more.

This month, holiday shoppers are expected to hit stores with smartphones in hand, and a recent Accenture survey finds that 54 percent of consumers will use their mobile phones to compare prices as they shop.

PayPal and Ipsos are predicting that 46 percent of smartphone users 18 and older will make holiday purchases using a mobile device. In June, Forrester Research forecasted that mobile commerce will reach $31 billion by 2016. The figure represents a compounded annual growth rate of 39 percent from 2011 to 2016, and is expected to amount to 7 percent of overall e-commerce sales in five years.

While progress is undeniable, Mobile in Retail Special Report's (RSR's) September "Keeping Up with the Mobile Consumer" benchmark report reveals that retailers are grappling with critical business challenges, including "difficulty coordinating the mobile experience with other channels" and a consumer technology landscape that is "evolving too quickly." We're seeing more creativity in mobile than we've seen in some time, and we're encouraging retailers to keep moving forward. Customers will reward retailers for trying - you don't have to have the coolest mobile site, but you need to get the basics right," says Steve Rowen, managing partner at RSR.

"Retailers need a business strategy that takes into account mobile's capabilities across the enterprise [and must] realize that a cut-and-paste version of their e-commerce site is not a viable mobile strategy."

Just over half of retail respondents expect their mobile sales to grow "significantly" in the next three years, and another 42 percent expect at least some growth. The findings suggest that the prevailing benefit of using mobile to connect with consumers - deeper customer engagement that fosters loyalty and drives sales - is now paramount in retailers' minds.

Sucharita Mulpuru, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, says 57 percent of online retailers have already developed a mobile commerce strategy, and 48 percent already have a mobile-optimized m-commerce site. Leslie Hand, research director for IDC Retail Insights, identifies two factors that continue to hang retailers up. "Retailers need more choices to feel comfortable with enterprise-scale deployments," Hand says.

The price tag for the ET1 is roughly twice that of an iPad, but Motorola director of global product marketing Sheldon Safir insists that businesses will need to buy 40 percent fewer ET1s because of the way they're built. The most compelling feature for retailers is likely to be the built-in RhoElements development platform that allows any existing applications running on Windows Mobile or Windows CE on Motorola Solutions mobile computers to migrate to the Android platform.

"The days of segmenting the business by stores, e-commerce, catalogue and mobile are over. The consumer looks at your brand and sees one retailer. If a retailer's mindset is not in sync with the consumer, their days are numbered."

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