Tag: mobile applications

Mobile commerce is growing

Mobile commerce has been showing strong growth around the world, but not everyone is making mobile payments. This is largely due to a lack of experience with mobile commerce platforms. While many consumers spend a significant amount of their time on a smartphone or tablet, relatively few of these people are comfortable with the concept of mobile commerce due to lack of exposure to the concept itself. Hailo, a venture capital-backed company that matches taxi drivers and passengers through the use of mobile applications, believes that there is a promising future ahead for mobile commerce.

Hailo helps expose consumers to new concepts

Hailo can find a person a taxi in many of the largest cities around the world. The application even allows passengers to pay cab fare using only their mobile device. Hailo believes that the service is quite beneficial to those that have somewhere to go in a hurry and it has certainly become useful to those that are too inebriated to drive safely. Hailo’s line of applications are not, of course, strictly designed to function as mobile commerce platforms, but they may be exposing more users to the concept of mobile commerce than many people realize.

Application may provide a much needed introductory step to mobile commerce

Hailo CEO Jay Bregman believes that mobile commerce will change the way people live their lives. Hailo’s impressive popularity is enough to suggest that this may be the case, as it has won praise from consumers for its mobile commerce capabilities. Bregman claims that the Hailo application can open up new doors in the future within the realm of mobile commerce, with the application itself serving as a low-impact first step for those that are unfamiliar with mobile payments in general.

Mobile commerce may change the way people pay for goods and services in the future

While many consumers have expressed interest in the idea of mobile payments, most do not participate in mobile commerce because they are uncertain of how to do so. The Hailo application can be considered as an introduction to mobile commerce, showing how consumers can pay for services that are quite valuable to them without actually using any form of physical currency.

The favorite apps are those that simplify retail purchasing, such as those that guide the in-store process.

The results of a new study by Parks Associates have now been released and have shown that over one in four shoppers of consumer electronic products in the United States who have broadband capable devices use mobile commerce apps on their smartphones in order to help them to make a purchasing decision.

They use a number of different features from these applications to help them to decide what is best.

Among the favorite mobile commerce app features, said the report, were functions for product research, QR code and barcode scanning, as well as apps that provide interactions with brands and the retailers themselves. The report on the research was published by Parks Associates under the title “Mobile Commerce: Keys to Mass Adoption”.

Forty three percent of American smartphone owners used mobile commerce to help buy a product in September.

Consumers – particularly those that shopped at Best Buy, Walmart, and Target – were also noted to be beginning to use their smartphones to make purchasing decisions via mobile commerce channels while they are actually in the stores. These three brands all encourage their shoppers to use their own apps while they are within their stores. According to Parks Associates, it is Target shoppers that are most likely to use these applications while they are looking to purchase a consumer electronics product.

According to a Parks Associates senior analyst, Jennifer Kent, “Consumers are using apps and smartphones to enhance their brick-and-mortar shopping experience, with Target shoppers emerging as the most enthusiastic app users.” She also stated that “Our research shows 54% of Target shoppers used at least one mobile commerce app while shopping in a store for CE, while only 38% of Walmart shoppers did the same.”

The analysts behind the mobile commerce report suggested that all retailers begin to embrace the smartphone friendly experience – both with their own apps and third party products – as a method of providing consumers an enhanced overall shopping experience, as well as a front line defense against losing sales to showrooming.