Mobile is driving the shopping experience both in stores and online. Roughly 73 percent of all online buyers are using a mobile device to shop online, and 21 percent are using mobile devices to help them shop in stores, according to Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity.
E-commerce revenue jumped 21 percent this holiday season over last year as mobile sales continue to climb - 30.4 percent of online sales were placed on mobile devices, according to Custora.
Mobility is a hot topic these days. Regardless of industry or profession, a mobile application or ecosystem is in development to serve it. The supply chain is no different. In fact, given its very manual and distributed nature, the supply chain is better suited to mobile application deployment than most business processes. For distribution and fulfillment services, where most of the activities take place away from the desktop, the extension of business processes to mobile applications just makes sense. Most CEOs today are looking to the supply chain for competitive advantage (think Amazon's drones), so the time is right for supply chain managers to begin the process of introducing mobile into their processes.
The buzz about the threat of mobile/e-commerce to physical stores has at times echoed "All About Eve," with "thumb shopping" playing the role of the ingénue poised to outshine those brick-and-mortar has-beens. But mobile shopping will actually have the opposite effect, according to Matt Moog, CEO of PowerReviews, which bills itself as a "Consumer Engagement Engine" that helps companies connect shoppers at the moment of purchase to drive sales.
With mobile commerce sales growing quickly, Staples is jockeying to hold onto its role as an ecommerce leader by opening its dedicated mobile site to direct sales from vendors.
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.
Luxury shoppers are more likely to use mobile channels when shopping but are slightly less satisfied with e-commerce overall, according to the Luxury E-Retail Satisfaction Index released by customer experience analytics firm ForeSee.
