In Reviewing, we explore the mobile and tablet innovation, developments in m-commerce, content creation and distribution, the continual proliferation of social media and the reality of the connected consumer.
In Previewing, we have identified eight trends that we believe will be of significance over the next year. These have been developed from the points of view shared in the essays. What they demonstrate is that, while the emphasis varies between regions, the overall themes are consistent globally. And while technology continues to develop at speed, it’s not technology itself that creates change but how consumers choose to interact and use it.
It’s another exciting year ahead – let us know what you think. Happy reading.
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A tease of the exciting content in RP:
Mobile and Retail: Increasingly Intimate Bedfellows
Written by: Cynthia Evans (Chief Strategy Officer, L America) and Andy Wasef (Head of Innovation and Technology, N America)
2012 was the year that saw the beginning of a beautiful romance.
In the preceding year or two, the affection was very much on the side of the consumer, embracing the use of mobile as part of their shopping process but with retailers not so enamoured. In 2012 we saw that change, with manufacturers and retailers taking the attitude ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ and developing mobile tools and services to augment consumers’ shopping experiences with them.
The behavior now commonly known as show-rooming (consumers using mobile sites/apps to check quality and price comparisons while in store, and often then buying elsewhere or abadoning a purchase entirely) became widespread in 2011 and 2012 among smartphone owners across the world in particular. After initially attempting to ‘block’ this behavior, 2012 was the year we saw the implementation of a number of strategies aimed at minimizing the effect as well as incentivizing the shopper to complete their purchase there and then.
Those strategies – price matching, private labels, exclusives only available in-store, enhanced loyalty programs, complementary content, free delivery to name a few – may be aimed at reducing the impact of show-rooming on the retailer, but, ultimately, it’s the shopper who benefits in all this.
In Latin America, despite e-commerce still being relatively limited and smartphone penetration still young, major regional retailers, like Fallabela, are also embracing this behavior. With 2013 economic indicators being strong and smartphone penetration expected to experience triple digit growth, expect to see this widely adopted almost as much as in markets like the US, Japan and the UK.
And of course, retail extends beyond banks and department stores. Big, complicated cities (of which Latin America has more than its share) encourage location based applications in many different physical ‘transactions’.
It was fascinating to see rules of shopper marketing disrupted by consumer behavior and retailer responses last year. The idea of actually enabling list creation and locating of items in large retailers would have been unheard of not too long ago, but that’s exactly what Walmart, Mejer and others have done in the US.
Meanwhile, many other grocery chains are looking at ways of moving away from the traditional checkout process and leveraging the mobile device to scan items as the shopper puts items in their bags and checkout on their own, while all manner of retailers (large and small) are using mobiles and tablets to enable inventory searches and remote checkout anywhere on the store floor.
Grocery chain Stop and Shop is trialing services that allow shoppers to do away with the in-store ‘wands’ and use their mobile phone to scan and bag items, processing payment on their phone at the end of their shop.
The developments that really took root in 2012 are fundamentally disrupting the traditional shopper marketing rulebook and require retailers (and manufacturers) to think about how they can enhance the physical shopping experience, how they can reduce the impact of
show-rooming behavior and how they integrate so many parts of their communications mix as well as fundamental parts of their business operations (e.g. stock management, staff training, pricing structures, infrastructure, data flow).
Digital had a hugely disruptive impact on retail with the introduction of online ecommerce,
but mobile is now influencing the physical retail environment in profound ways that could have an even greater effect (and benefit) on our daily lives.
2012 was the year that retailers and manufacturers got in bed with mobile – long may the romance continue.
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