Tag: National Retail Federation

Retail industry sets its sights on mobile payments

Retail event will highlight the promising future of the mobile payments space

One of the retail industry’s major conventions is coming to New York and mobile payments may be one of the highlights of the event. The National Retail Federation will be hosting the event, as usual, and the organization suggests that mobile payments may be a significant focus of many companies attending the event. Retailers have become more interested in the mobile space over the past few years, largely due to growing smartphone penetration. In order to better engage consumers, these companies have become very supportive of mobile commerce.

Rewards program may encourage consumers to make use of new payment services

The mobile payments space is still quite young, but it is growing quickly. A growing number of retailers have begun to find that engaging mobile consumers with new payment services has been successful. In order to continue finding success, however, retailers will have to add value to their mobile offerings. Approximately 78% of consumers noted that they would make use of mobile payments services more often if they had access to some sort of rewards program through these services.

Security remains a major concern for consumers

mobile payments and retailMany consumers have shown favor for mobile payments because of the convenience that it represents. The problem, however, is security. Consumers have fears that their financial and personal information may be at risk if they were to use a mobile payment service. Retailers have been targeted in the past by those wishing to exploit consumer information, with some malicious groups focusing on mobile channels.

Retailers will have to take risks to find success in the mobile payments space

Retailers will have to find ways to ensure that consumer information is protected in order to find success in the mobile payments space. They will also have to find ways to add value to existing mobile payments services. Loyalty programs may be the best way to accomplish this, as consumers have shown great favor for these programs. The mobile payments space may thrive as a result of greater security and more valuable features being offered by retailers.

M-commerce is taking over the holiday shopping experience

According to the results of a recent study, more people mobile shopped over the holiday weekend than ever.

According to a recent study from the National Retail Federation, there were more people who used m-commerce over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend than has been the case in any previous year.

The online survey showed that online retail saw a considerable online shopping spike, particularly over mobile.

The research took into consideration the shopping habits of over 151 million people who said that they had shopped in stores, online or over m-commerce over that weekend launching the holiday shopping season. Many retailers took care to offer the same deals over their websites that they had to offer in store, allowing consumers to be able to make the purchases they wanted without having to wait in line in the actual shops. The survey itself was conducted on behalf of the federation by Prosper Insight & Analytics. It indicated that approximately 102 million people had said they shopped in store on the Thanksgiving weekend.

That said, even more – 103 million people – said they shopped online and over m-commerce channels.

m-commerce study - mobile shoppingThe survey also showed that even by the close of the weekend, there were still 121 million people who had intended to shop online and over mobile commerce on Cyber Monday. While this is a significant number, it should be pointed out that it is actually a reduction when compared to the 126.9 million people that had intended to shop on Cyber Monday after having done so over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend.

According to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal, this year, consumers spent an estimated $4.45 billion over online and mobile commerce channels on Thursday and Friday, alone. Black Friday sales increased by 14 percent when compared to the figures from 2014, according to the data shared by Adobe Systems, Inc. That online and m-commerce figure is based on purchases made in about 4,500 locations across the United States. Adobe’s estimates were also that over half of online shopping occurred over smartphones, further underscoring the importance of mobile devices for retail shopping.