Mobility for Shopping and Retail? Why is it required?

......Let's take the example of a female shopper aged between 30 and 40 entering the store for purchasing groceries and other consumables. The application detects which store she has entered, and "greets" her with a welcome message and a list of the day's special offers in that store. The application then displays a "shopping list" built automatically based on her past purchase history, along with a recommended and optimal "shopping path" through the store. While evaluating a particular product - say a box of a new cereal brand, the shopper uses her application to scan the barcode, and retrieve additional information such as nutrition facts, and reviews and comments by other shoppers.....

What is likely to outnumber the billions of human beings on planet Earth over the next few years? The answer: mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers. Consumers the world over are switching to such devices as their primary channel for communicating, messaging, performing basic tasks and accessing information over the internet. This revolution is impacting various industry sectors, one of the significant ones being the retail industry. In retail stores the world over, consumers increasingly use 'smart' shopping applications on their mobile devices while inside the store. 

New research conducted by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research last November showed that 51% of consumers are more likely to purchase from retailers that have a mobile-specific Website, but only 4.8% of retailers actually have one. 

These applications provide value added services such as information on products beyond what is available in the store. Such information could include product details, reviews, ratings from other consumers, and better deals from other retailers. If a better deal is available elsewhere, the consumer usually opts for it resulting in a negative impact on store sales. Retailers are usually willing to match the best offers from competitors - but are hindered by the lack of real-time intelligence about consumer behavior while inside the store.

Smartphones currently influence 5.1 percent of annual retail store sales, translating into $159 billioni  in forecasted sales for 2012, according to new Deloitte research. For the first time in the industry, the in-depth study measures the “mobile influence factor,” or impact of smartphones on in-stores sales.

The mobile influence factor captures the in-store sales driven by consumers’ store-related smartphone activity such as product research, price comparison or other mobile application use.

Deloitte anticipates mobile’s influence, based on consumers’ smartphone use, will grow to represent 19 percent of total store sales by 2016, amounting to $689 billion in mobile-influenced sales. By comparison, direct mobile commerce sales will pass the $30 billion mark by that time, according to industry estimates. 

Shopping is more than just making a purchase, it's a process, and like most things today, technology is changing the process of shopping, which in turn is changing consumer behavior. Mobile technology is disrupting the traditional path-to-purchase and is having a profound effect on the retail landscape.

In many ways, the shopping process has become more casual. Traditionally, people would do most of their product research at home, narrowing their selections before deciding on a purchase. Mobile technology is changing this process by empowering shoppers with the ability to gather information on the spot from multiple sources, check on product availability, special offers, and alter their selection at any point along the path-to-purchase.

People are planning and shopping differently today. Mobile shopping is spontaneous, non-linear, and very fluid. People are shopping in ways, and in places, that they never did before—and that's really the power of mobile shopping.