Retail is Going Mobile
The latest trend in retailing is m-commerce, in which the ‘m’ stands for mobile. Increasingly, customers are making purchases directly from smart phones. According to Forrester Research, retail sales made on smart phones reached $8 billion in 2012, comprising 3% of total e-commerce sales. For 2013, Forrester predicts that smart phone sales will rise to $12 billion (5% of total e-commerce) and in 2014 $17 billion (6% of total e-commerce). By 2017, m-commerce is expected to account for $31 billion, about 9% of the entire e-commerce market.
Why is Mobile Going Global?
These m-commerce customers told the survey firm comScore that they buy with their smart phones for a variety of reasons. The top four were:
- On-the-go convenience, cited by 63% of respondents
- To get special offers and coupons — 52% of respondents
- Ease of comparing prices to find best deal — 48% of respondents
- Product was not found in a brick and mortar store — 41% of resondents
What Retailers Can Do About It
This preference for m-commerce has some significant implications for retailers:
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- You must be sure that your website — in this situation, referred to as a mobile site — is optimized for the small screen, whose average size is about 2.5 x 3 inches.
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- You should also offer free ‘apps’ — short for applications — for all the major smart phone operating systems. [An app is a small piece of software that is downloaded to a mobile device to facilitate online activities.] Pay special attention to developing a good app for Apple’s iOS, since iPhone owners do substantially more mobile shopping than owners of other brands.
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- You may also want to investigate selling watches and other products via a virtual store within one or both of the two most heavily trafficked m-commerce sites, eBay and Amazon. Consider this: eBay receives 6,400 unique monthly visitors, each of whom visits the site an average of 7.5 times for an average of 10 minutes per visit. Amazon is close behind, with 5,824 unique monthly visitors, each of whom visits an average of 5.6 times per month and remains on the site for about10 minutes. Some major retailers sell on these sites, including Target on Amazon and Brookstone on eBay.
- If you sell retail from temporary locations, such as outdoor kiosks, pop-up stores or Christmas village shops, there are m-commerce products for your smart phone that make selling more convenient. For example, a company called Square makes a small device that attaches to your smart phone and enables it to take credit cards. There’s no need for card machines or electrical access. Just slide the customer’s card through the Square device. It will record the sale, send an electronic receipt to the customer’s phone and that’s it.
An interesting mobile development for watch retailers is the budding popularity of smart watches, which are predicted to be big for 2013 holiday gift-giving. Several brands are already on the market, although there aren’t many apps available at this point. You can read all about the new smart watches at SmartWatchNews.org, and perhaps be one of the first retailers to create an app for these novel devices. (Very Dick Tracy.)
About Gevril Group
Gevril Group is the exclusive US representative for select European watch brands, distributing and servicing luxury, fashion and sports timepieces at a wide range of price points. Gevril Group also operates a full-service watch repair department staffed by master Swiss watchmakers. Contact Gevril Group by email or by calling 845-425-9882.
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