Shopping is changing and your brand’s mobile strategy needs to change with it. For today’s online customer a shopping cart is something you find at Amazon.com, not in a supermarket parking lot. The mobile device is changing how we shop, where we buy and what a transaction looks like. And not surprisingly, this brave new world of retail, is being embraced by the millennial crowd much faster than by the boomer generation. This too, needs to shape your mobile strategy.
For instance, in a recent survey of Americans and Brits, 57% of millennials (ages 18-34) say they use their mobile device to scan images in a magazine in order to make a purchase. Contrast that with only 19% of baby boomers (ages 48-67) who practice this new-fangled shopping behavior. Thanks in large part to today’s mobile technology, all kinds of portals from subway stations to newspaper ads are becoming viable retail channels. For the 2012 holiday season, Walmart and Mattel turned a wall in the Toronto underground walkway into a 3D toy store with QR codes to assist you in your purchases.
The same survey of 1,000+ adults revealed that shoppers are most comfortable with the idea of purchasing via touch-screen technology in public places like train stations. Again, the millennials are far more venturesome than the over 50 crowd. 52% say they would click a link on an online video to make a retail purchase. Only 27% of boomers were keen on this idea. But that too is evolving.
Using your mobile phone to scan a code, search competitive availability or even download a movie is becoming so commonplace, that retail brands that are slow to adopt will find themselves left behind. Use 2013 to cobble together a mobile strategy that will have your brand out front. Or you can simply go to the back of the check out line with the other dinosaurs.
We are a Dallas Advertising Agency specializing in Mobile Strategy.
