Overcoming The Overwhelming In Mobile Retailing

By Erin Harris, Editor-In-Chief, Cell & Gene
Follow Me On Twitter @ErinHarris_1

Deloitte’s annual report, Global Powers of Retailing, focuses this year’s theme on innovation. The report takes a deep dive into how retailers are using innovations to address the various changes impacting their businesses. Not surprisingly, one of the top five trends discussed in the report is the proliferation of mobile retailing. Indeed, Deloitte reports a projected 65% of the global population will be using a mobile phone in 2015 and an estimated 83% of Internet usage will be through handheld devices, and that mobile payments and location-based marketing will play a larger role in the coming year. As such, retailers are taking actions to accommodate the customer’s affinity for mobile.

Among other things, the report suggests that retailers will need to implement and offer free in-store Wi-Fi and mobile-friendly websites optimized for the different kinds of mobile devices. The report instructs retailers to employ trust, transparency, and security around customer and business data as mobile retailing becomes the norm. This is sound advice and the technology recommendations make perfect sense in today’s evolved retail landscape. But, no matter how sound the advice or logical the tech take-aways, seeing these recommendations in print can be exceptionally overwhelming to retailers who have to cough up the funds and resources to bring these things to life inside their organizations. Because, let’s face it, sometimes, even Tier 1 retailers struggle to deliver a mobile experience that exceeds customer’s expectations.

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