U.S. retail real estate developer Simon is deploying a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon system across the nearly 240 malls and shopping centers that it owns or has an interest in, in order to help merchants connect with their customers based on real-time data regarding each shopper's location at those sites.
Online shoppers want retailers to make it easier to purchase their goods and services. Consumers also want websites and stores to work better together. For now, they also prefer to evaluate and purchase products from their desktops rather than their mobile devices, and when it comes to shipping and returns "free" is a driving factor to complete the sale. These and other findings appear in the third annual UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, conducted earlier this year by comScore.
Omnichannel retailing, which provides customers with a consistent research, shopping, purchasing and fulfillment experience regardless of channel, lies at the heart of many retailer transformation efforts. Additionally, mobile shopping, same-day delivery, and growing volumes of data from online channels are forcing retailers to a tipping point to remain competitive and better respond to evolving customer needs and preferences.
The ubiquity of the internet and smartphones has made e-commerce and m-commerce grow by leaps and bounds. But fear not, brick-and-mortar retailers: in-store shopping isn't going anywhere. In fact, brick-and-mortar retail still drives more than 90 percent of commerce, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
While the mobile channel grows in importance and revenue for merchants, so does their fear of fraudulent attacks and the realization that combating that risk requires specialized tools. Those are some of the key findings from the Second Annual Mobile Payments and Fraud Survey, available for free download at the Kount Inc. website.
Success in marketing to U.S. millennials"”the generation of people now 18 to 34 years old"”will be critical to companies across product and service categories. One reason, of course, is that millennials represent the consumer market of the future.
In the United States, B2B e-commerce revenue has now more than doubled that of B2C - with $559bn annually in sales - and B2B players that fail to embrace online and mobile as leading channels risk losing market share in the short and medium term, and sustainable competitive advantage in the long-term.
Fifty-three percent of industry leaders believe that improving customers' retail experience would be essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme, according to survey by SAP. The GSMA Mobile World Congress survey is aimed at addressing top issues facing mobile commerce service providers and reflects the sentiments of mobile operators, fixed telecommunication providers, over-the-top (OTT) players and other global mobile industry executives.
Luxury shoppers are more likely to use mobile channels when shopping but are slightly less satisfied with e-commerce overall, according to the Luxury E-Retail Satisfaction Index released by customer experience analytics firm ForeSee.
Symphony EYC, a player in retail and distribution improvement software formerly known as Aldata, announced that its second U.S. holiday shopping survey has determined that in the United States shoppers want to use their mobile phones to make shopping easier, more personalized, and to have more control over inventory, but that purchasing groceries with a mobile is still in its infancy.
