Category: Mobile Commerce

Google takes ambitious steps to secure position in mobile commerce arena

For the past year, Google has been showing strong interest in mobile commerce and online retail. The company’s Google Wallet has been somewhat well received by consumers around the world, many of whom praise the product’s ability to make purchasing products more convenient. Google has seen significant growth in the mobile commerce and retail arenas, which has lead to confrontation with companies that have long held dominance in these industries, such as Amazon.

Channel Intelligence platform could be a major boon for Google

In a move to make itself more competitive with Amazon, Google has announced the acquisition of Channel Intelligence, a data management platform for retailer inventory. Channel Intelligence could give Google the tools it needs to make major progress in the realm of e-commerce. The platform holds a vast amount of information concerning retail advertisers. Using the platform, Google will be able to access detailed retailer pricing and inventory data, as well as data on how retailers convert shoppers into dedicated customers. The platform is expected to give Google better pricing power over its own advertisements.

Platform to help Google provide better services to retailers

The Channel Intelligence platform will help Google offer better options to retailers concerning advertising through its widely used search engine. This will allow the company to establish a more dominant foothold in the world of online shopping and likely set it to directly compete with Amazon. Consumers have already proven that they rely heavily on online search to make their shopping more efficient, but more of these consumers are using mobile devices to shop and research products. Amazon already has a significant lead over Google in regards to catering to mobile consumers.

Mobile commerce demand growing among consumers

Mobile commerce continues to be a strong focus for Google and other companies interested in the retail industry. The demand for mobile commerce services among consumers has reached the point where it can no longer be ignored by retailers, thus these companies are making a push to accommodate the needs and interests of these consumers more adequately. Google has seen a major opportunity for growth in providing these retailers with tools that could make them more effective in the field of mobile commerce.

This feature of the self checkout in store locations has been broadened through its app for iPhones.

Walmart has been testing its mobile payments feature through a self checkout process at some of its store locations has now announced that it will be broadening the pilot program to reach 40 stores in the Denver area.

The retail giant uses QR codes generated by an iPhone app, which can be scanned at a checkout terminal.

This allows the iPhone users to scan all of their own products while the cart is being filled, and then indicate when they have picked up all of the items that they intend to buy. At that point, a unique QR code is generated, and this can be scanned by one of the self checkout terminal devices in order to complete the mobile payments transaction.

Walmart has been investigating many ways to use mobile payments and mcommerce to its best advantage.

This effort includes not only looking into ways that customers can use mobile payments, but also simply to speed up the checkout process through its “Scan & Go” iPhone app. As of yet, none of these programs have been rolled out universally to all of its locations, but these mcommerce opportunities are being tested in a number of stores in the Denver area, as well as in Atlanta, Northwest Arkansas, San Jose (California) and Portland (Oregon).

This new app lets the consumer scan the products as they are being placed into the shopping cart or basket, eliminating the need to do so at the checkout counter. Once all of the items are scanned, the iPhone app creates a list of all of the products that have been scanned, and represents them with QR codes that can be used by the readers at the checkout terminals. This allows the various traditional and mobile payment options to be presented to the consumer.

Walmart stores have been focusing heavily on mobile payments and particularly on self checkout since October 2012. It was at that time that the retailer announced that NCR would be the checkout terminal vendor for the tests as well as for the complete American rollout, which is expected by the end of 2013.