Optism™

For years, brick and mortar stores in the US competed with each other on price, selection and service. The advent of online shopping has effectively taken away price and selection, so physical stores increasingly need to compete on service. Mobile has the potential to level the playing field for stores looking to deliver the best service to consumers.

Let’s examine trends and examples of each of these shopping elements and see what is in store for stores as they compete against online-only retailers.

Price

The Internet has had a tremendous impact on prices. Using your mobile phone to instantaneously get pricing information on most products has forced US retailers like Wal-Mart, Target and Sears to keep their prices in line with their online and off-line competitors.

For these retailers, the biggest online competitor is Amazon and according a William Blair & Co. study, Amazon is 9% cheaper than Wal-Mart when sales tax is not factored into the price of the product but shipping is. Retailers complain about “showrooming”, the opportunity for shoppers to examine products in the stores but purchase them elsewhere. To make it easier (and some would say unethical), Amazon introduced their PriceCheck mobile app which enables consumers to go to a brick-and-mortar retailer and use the app to scan a product’s barcode to check the Amazon price for the product. If the price is lower at Amazon, the product is placed in the app’s virtual shopping cart.

Big box retailers are fighting back against their online-only competitors with a variety of strategies. Sears is offering in-store Wi-Fi to encourage shoppers to price check to see that the prices at Sears are competitive.  Virtually every major retailer is now offering mobile coupons, including Target, which is developing instant coupons  directed at specific customers once they are already in the store.

Selection

Amazon has the largest online selection with an estimated 10 million unique products while the average Wal-Mart or Target physical store has about 100,000 unique products and 100,000 square feet of space. Retailers are trying to compete with Amazon with a number of strategies on product selection.

• Target is pushing suppliers to offer products that are not available online while simultaneously increasing its online offering through its Target.com website.
• Wal-Mart pushed the concept of “endless aisle” to its store, to encourage its sales people to recommend to shoppers to use their phones to check wal-mart.com if they can’t find the product in store. Wal-Mart credits all online sales to the closest physical store so physical stores can still meet sales goals.

Retailers could look to Apple as example of offering a smaller and highly recommended selection of products, since the number of choices can be overwhelming at times. The average Apple store has a handful of products and only 8,000 square feet of space.

Service

Physical stores should be able to compete on a number of elements of service. According to digital think tank L2; Sephora, Nordstrom, Macy’s and NET-A-Porter are the most “mobile-competent” brands, measured across a number of variables including their mobile marketing approach and innovation.

Here are examples of how retailers are and should be using mobile to compete on service:

• Apps – Retailers are using their apps to record shoppers’ preferences and location. Apple is now allowing customers in-store to use their mobile app to alert a salesperson that they need assistance or to allow the consumer to ring up their order right on their phone.
• Delivery – Best Buy and Sears offer the convenience of online shopping with the option of in-store pickup. Sears says the product you order online will be ready for you in five minutes at the store – guaranteed, or you get a $5 store coupon. Connecting a consumer’s online ordering account with the stores’ mobile app could make the experience completely seamless without hassle of a paper receipt.
• Rewards – As we wrote about last month, retailers are offering rewards for non-purchasing activities.  Retailers like Target, Macy’s and Best Buy have partnered with incentive company, ShopKick to offer rewards for shopping activities, like demoing a product, visiting a store or recommending a product.
• SMS and QR Codes – Macy’s is focused on offering a “360 degree” shopping experience, connecting shoppers to its products through innovate mobile programs to merge the off-line and online experience. The Macy’s Backstage Pass program, for example, brings the retailer’s celebrity designers and fashion icons like Martha Stewart and Tommy Hilfiger into every store location nationwide via QR codes and SMS, providing fashion tips and recommendations.
• SoLoMo - Paul Cousineau, vice president of mobile products at Wal-Mart says about the intersection of Social, Local and Mobile, “It’s about accelerating your multichannel strategy,” he said. “Consumers don’t engage with channels, they engage with the brand and you have to think about how to make that experience as seamless as possible.” Wal-Mart using social recommendations and local proximity to deliver customized offers.

Conclusion

While Amazon (and other online-only retailers) may continue to win on price and selection, at least for the short-term, retailers with physical stores are aggressively fighting back to provide better service using mobile to provide an enhanced shopping experience. As shoppers become more comfortable with mobile technology and smartphone adoption in the US moves from 50% to 75%, retailers will have the opportunity to provide a more sophisticated and complete shopping experience through mobile.

Mobile users want a better shopping experience was the key takeaway from a report by advertising agency JWT, who surveyed 465 US mobile users about their shopping experiences during the 2011 holiday season. The survey reported that a majority of the respondents are now using their phones to conduct shopping tasks like getting price and product information, conferring with friends about product choices, sharing product information with the social networks and making mobile purchases.

The goal of the survey was to better understand how consumers were using their mobile devices in retail settings, how they were using their mobile phones throughout the entire buying cycle and how they were using their mobiles in other settings like at home or at work.

The report identified 5 learnings.

1. Mobile Shopping is Not About Purchasing

While mobile shoppers are using their phones to support their shopping experience, only a small minority are using their phones to actually purchase products. Security was cited as the key reason for not making mobile purchases. According to the survey, people are using mobile frequently in different places (stores, friend/family’s house, at work).

2. Men are Using Mobile More Than Women To Shop

According to the survey, the percentage of men using their mobile phone was equal to or higher than women for every shopping task. In fact, the percentage of men using their phones to get more product information and make a mobile purchase was 15-20% higher than women. 44% of women surveyed did not make a mobile holiday purchase, while 19% of men did not make a purchase.

3. Mobile Shopping Experience during the Holidays was Positive

Almost 70% of mobile users surveyed say that they are satisfied with their mobile shopping experience, as users enjoyed skipping crowded holiday lines and being able to purchase while the shopping was “top of mind”. Areas of concern are security, lack of apps, lack of product information and mobile site navigation.

 4. Sometimes mobile devices are preferred over the computer

While mobile is the primary device used outside of home and work, retailers should look at mobile sites now as a new shopping channel not a supplemental outlet.

 5. Young People are Buying Different Things via Mobile

When asked if they would have purchased the same items online as they did via mobile, the results were split mostly between “All items” and “Some Items”. However, segmenting the results by age saw that people under 30, were 2.5 times more likely to choose “some items” over “all items”. We can infer that younger people are using mobile as more of a browsing device and are open to learning about and purchasing new items while older people are using mobile as another shopping option.

What does this mean for retailers and brands?

First, mobile has now come into its own and should be regarded as a serious and separate channel. Second, while mobile users are for the most part satisfied, consumer expectations will go up dramatically as users will not tolerate a substandard mobile shopping experience. Finally, brands need to recognize that mobile users behave differently across age and gender. As brands start gearing up for the next holiday shopping season, they should heed the results from this excellent report.

MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) Asia Forum unfolded on April 23-25 in Singapore. Thanks to the efforts by the MMA, the increasing presence of media agencies and brands in this forum clearly indicates their necessity and importance to harness mobile as an effective channel to reach the consumers in the region. The presentations, discussions and conversations over these 3 days highlighted how the development of the mobile marketing and advertising industry is contingent on a deeper understanding of tech-equipped digitally-aware consumers, who increasingly shape the new emerging media.

The tone and direction was set right in the beginning during the first panel discussion by Nick Seckold, Head of Digital, Mindshare APAC, when he mentioned that the question is not anymore “Why Mobile” but “How Mobile.” This was echoed throughout the forum by various speakers, panelists and in general conversations during the breaks. This is a major milestone and turning point for the mobile marketing community at large! After all, the figures speak for themselves. Marketers can no longer put mobile on back burner as smartphone sales surpassed the number of PCs sold in 2011. Hand held mobile devices will dwarf the number of PCs in a couple of years. With the number of iPhones alone sold per minute across the globe being more than the number of babies born per minute, the change is taking place at a pace far greater than humans increasing their foot print on the earth!

And the direction on “How Mobile?” was so aptly given by none other than the MMA APAC Chairman Barney Loehnis who heads Digital for Ogilvy & Mather in APAC. Barney reminded us that while thinking “mobile”, the focus has to remain on consumer experience and not on placement of mobile as media. Brands and advertisers look for engagement, interaction and convergence, and mobile as a channel is capable of creating engagement at every point in the purchase funnel. However, there is a need to “re-imagine mobile” – creatively and otherwise. With mobile, the marketers need to target moments, moods, mindsets and milliseconds as opposed to socio-demographic segments at certain times. As per Barney, the need is to CAPTURE the Mobile Moments and Movements of the consumers to effectively TOUCH them and go beyond just Conversation to Conversions. And CAPTURE as per Barney means;

C – Contextual

A – Always On

P – Placely

T – Timely

U – Useful

R – Remarkable

E – Effortful

Barney presented some very interesting case studies and use cases around mobile and ended his keynote by highlighting that because people are ready to take decisions on the go, the transactional nature of mobile is transformative. As per Barney, mobile marketing is also about building consumer insights and a providing a long-term platform for loyalty. A word of caution to the brands from Barney about Mobile display ads – NEVER do mobile display ads unless your landing page is mobile optimized and actionable. According Google, more than 70% sites are not optimized for mobile!

Ashutosh Srivastav, CEO, Mindshare Asia reiterated the same thought about the role of mobile at every stage of the consumer journey mentioning that mobile is an always on performance based platform adding interactivity to static media. He reminded the audience to look at mobile as a central touch point of integrated communication in the media mix and not as a separate platform.

This central position occupied by mobile was reinforced by Michael Bayle, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile, ESPN, who called mobile the bridge that connected fans to all media.

Rahul Welde, Vice President, Media Unilever for Asia, Africa, Middle-East & Turkey in the concluding panel discussion for the Forum aptly stated, “For mobile media to take off effectively, the need is to create Aha moments for the consumers on mobile”. Welde believes that mobile is still new to tens of thousands of marketers, the need is to build the capability and awareness in the industry to create the much needed Aha moments on mobile.

As for SMS, the view that reverberated through the forum is that despite the advent of smartphones this channel still remains the most effective way to engage the masses on mobile. SMS is great for Call to Actions and thus to turbo-charge the campaigns. It is the simplest and the most widely used channel by consumers on mobile who otherwise are trying to keep abreast and are constantly mired in the tumble of technology.

Sadly we are not at the end of push messaging. Conversations take thought, but push just takes money. More emphasis needs to be placed on effectively engaging the consumer. That’s where permission and preference based contextual conversations come in to play.