U.S. retail real estate developer Simon is deploying a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon system across the nearly 240 malls and shopping centers that it owns or has an interest in, in order to help merchants connect with their customers based on real-time data regarding each shopper's location at those sites.

Online shoppers want retailers to make it easier to purchase their goods and services. Consumers also want websites and stores to work better together. For now, they also prefer to evaluate and purchase products from their desktops rather than their mobile devices, and when it comes to shipping and returns "free" is a driving factor to complete the sale. These and other findings appear in the third annual UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper study, conducted earlier this year by comScore.

Omnichannel retailing, which provides customers with a consistent research, shopping, purchasing and fulfillment experience regardless of channel, lies at the heart of many retailer transformation efforts. Additionally, mobile shopping, same-day delivery, and growing volumes of data from online channels are forcing retailers to a tipping point to remain competitive and better respond to evolving customer needs and preferences.

In the United States, B2B e-commerce revenue has now more than doubled that of B2C - with $559bn annually in sales - and B2B players that fail to embrace online and mobile as leading channels risk losing market share in the short and medium term, and sustainable competitive advantage in the long-term.

Fifty-three percent of industry leaders believe that improving customers' retail experience would be essential to creating a successful mobile payments scheme, according to survey by SAP. The GSMA Mobile World Congress survey is aimed at addressing top issues facing mobile commerce service providers and reflects the sentiments of mobile operators, fixed telecommunication providers, over-the-top (OTT) players and other global mobile industry executives.