By really understanding who is shopping in their stores, how they shop and how mobile influences their shopping behaviors, retailers can respond with mobile shopping, personalization and promotion capabilities that are designed to create value for both customers and themselves.
While mobile clearly is transforming how people shop, the shopping process that consumers follow—from discovery through research, selection and payment—remains largely unchanged. Thus, making it important to ensure that mobile experiences fit naturally and intuitively with how the consumer engages at different points of the shopping journey.
And while the physical store still plays an important role for shoppers, it doesn’t appear to be disappearing any time soon.
As mobile capabilities become more robust, the associated development and implementation investment requirements will likely become more significant.
Given the pace of change and level of uncertainty regarding mobile technology innovation and consumer preference and adoption, it is necessary that retailers remain nimble and iterative when developing and deploying new capabilities. Having a long-term vision is an important foundation, but planning further than 18 months into the future is likely to be a fool’s errand.