15% of consumers have made purchases on their phones, new survey says

Internet Retailer reports that "15% of consumers have used their mobile devices to make purchases, and nearly 25% have used their devices to compare prices while in a store, according to a new study..."

This online survey was conducted on behalf of e-commerce and m-commerce technology vendors Sterling Commerce and Demandware Inc. by SmartRevenue in June/July 2010 and surveyed 3,611 male and female consumers ages 18 and older living in the United States.

"The survey also found that 96.2% of respondents own a mobile phone and just under half own a smartphone, which render richer mobile commerce shopping experiences."

The study also found that:

• More than 60% of consumers believe using their mobile phones while shopping to verify product availability at a store location is important to very important.
• 20% currently use their phones to create shopping lists and slightly more than that would be interested in a mobile app to help with shopping list management for their favorite retailers.
• 67% are interested in using their smartphones to scan and purchase items to bypass checkout lines.
• 25% believe receiving specials and promotions, such as coupons, would be an important use for their mobile phones when shopping.

“'Mobility is more than a channel, and as consumers begin to use mobile devices in all aspects of their shopping process, cross-channel will be essential for retailers to succeed,' says Jim Bengier, global retail industry executive at Sterling Commerce. 'Today’s consumers are transforming the shopping experience with their mobile phones, and retailers who have not broken down their siloed channels will not be able to keep up.'

"The survey also found some concerns that may hinder the adoption of m-commerce among some consumers. The concerns include:

• Difficulty with the small screen size (34%) and therefore difficulty in visualizing the products (31%).
• Security issues (28%).
• Slow performance of an m-commerce site (22%).
• Difficulties entering information because of small keypad (21%).

"Although security issues were mentioned as a concern by only 28% of respondents, the top services that would encourage more mobile phone purchases all to a degree address security issues, the survey says:

• Nearly half of consumers would like the option of using PayPal.
• Nearly 40 percent would feel secure knowing that a mobile phone app would not store their credit card number.
• A quarter of consumers would prefer that the mobile phone would show only a truncated credit card number (last 4 digits).
• About 20 percent would like to be prompted to enter their 3-digit credit card security numbers."

Notes Mobile Commerce Daily, "While the increasing consumer adoption rate of mobile devices has long been recognized by retailers, these survey findings suggest that offering mobile access to the brand is no longer just a 'nice to have' — it has become a necessity, according to Demandware. The mandate for retailers is not only to create a mobile channel to give consumers more options, but also to find innovative ways to leverage mobile to influence consumer shopping and purchase behavior across all sales channels."

How to Meet Consumer Expectations in a "Transformative Time" (Forrester)

According to PowerRetail.net, a recent Forrester Research Report, "we are in a highly transformative time as changing customer expectations, commerce capabilities, and technology continue to evolve rapidly. Initiatives that just a few short years ago would have seemed a long way off — such as mobile commerce, app stores, multichannel order management, or embedding shopping on Facebook — are now squarely on the priority list of eCommerce business and technology leaders. And as consumer expectations, client needs, and the competitive environment continue to evolve, pressure on executives to make the right choices in technology and operational capabilities continues to mount." The Forrester report, says PowerRetailer, highlights the key factors that retailers need to understand and consider in order to remain competitive. These include:

• Focusing on development of key services that expose core data, business logic, and enable long-term flexibility in driving end user experiences across various channels including, social media, mobile applications, third-party marketplaces and rich internet applications. In addition to this, consumers expect consistent information, policies, fulfillment options, and service options across all of these channels – making it necessary for retailers to reply in kind or risk losing custom.
• Investing in systems, such as, order management, commerce platforms, product content management, customer data management and intelligence, to manage the online multichannels and service their customer base. [my emphasis]
  
• Using existing content as an asset, by aggregating, testing and optimizing it routinely.
• Understanding customers and their needs and using this information to build business cases for the development of new multichannel customer experiences.

Conclusions: "The report notes that often bureaucracy can play a role in limiting companies moving into multichannel customer experiences. In order to be innovative and competitive within this highly dynamic landscape, understanding and support from senior level leadership is crucial."

Industry Group Urges PRC to Deny Proposed USPS Rate Hike

From the PostalNews blog: "The Affordable Mail Alliance – a growing coalition of non-profits, Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, major trade associations, consumer groups, and citizens representing the vast majority of the mail sent in the United States – filed comments urging the Postal Regulatory Commission to help rein in the USPS’s excessive costs by denying the proposed rate hike."

“'The Post Office needs to reevaluate their approach,' said Jerry Cerasale, Affordable Mail Alliance Spokesperson and Senior Vice President of the Direct Marketing Association. 'Instead of trying to keep things afloat with a giant tax on consumers, the USPS should focus on improving management and controlling costs to get out of this mess. To do otherwise is just bad business.'

"This is the Alliance’s final legal step before the PRC announces their decision on October 4. The comments also highlight the Postal Service’s flip-flop on the cause for their request. The USPS previously claimed that such a severe rate increase was needed to alleviate an immediate and unforeseen cash crisis. But at the public hearing held on August 10, a top official admitted that the 'crisis' would not prevent them from operating in their current fashion for at least the next year. The Postal Service now claims that the rate increase is needed to prevent a longer-term profit slowdown over the next decade.

“'Our comments make the same case that businesses and working families are making all over the country,' said Cerasale. 'The Postal Service’s proposed rate hike is unreasonable, unhelpful, and unlawful, and the more than one thousand members of the Alliance are not going to let the Postal Service take advantage of its customers.'"

"The comments reiterate what the Alliance has argued all along – that the Postal Service has failed to show that it would suffer from its projected losses if it followed 'best practices of honest, efficient and economical management,' and has failed to meet the “extraordinary or exceptional” circumstance test of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The increase thus should be rejected, especially at this time of economic uncertainty for America."

Digby Adds Users to mCommerce Platform

Two new users for Digby's mCommerce Platform: Northern Tool and Equipment and Lilly Pulitzer. The Lilly Pulitzer mobile Web storefront from Digby provides comprehensive features for shoppers that are optimized for their mobile phones, such as:

• Ability to browse and search across the entire catalog
• Rich product descriptions and full-color images
• Address book integration
• Mobile optimized checkout
• Store locator
• Quick access to new arrivals
• Seamless integration with existing backend cataloging and order processing systems
• Expanded optimization for Android and iPhone to build on additional extensions

"Working with the team at Lilly Pulitzer is inspiring, because they truly 'get' mobile and how important it is for interacting with consumers now and in the future," said David Sikora, CEO, Digby. The Digby and Lilly Pulitzer mobile commerce agreement was a catalyst for the recently announced alliance between Digby and Venda, Lilly Pulitzer's on-demand eCommerce platform provider.

Venda's Advanced Mobile Platform Powered by Digby

Venda, which claims to be "the world's largest on-demand eCommerce provider," has introduced the Venda Advanced Mobile Platform (A.M.P.) powered by Digby, an enterprise mobile commerce offering that provides multichannel merchants a unified shopping experience between in-store, online, catalog and mobile devices.

Venda A.M.P., powered by the Digby Mobile Commerce suite, is a feature-rich mobile portfolio that is integrated with the Venda Enterprise eCommerce platform. This seamless solution, supported by Venda's global customer support organization, provides brands and retailers with a unified platform to connect with their audience and customers, delivering unique and personalized shopping experiences anywhere, anytime.

According to a recent survey of 1,052 consumers conducted by Deloitte LLP, 21% of consumer shoppers have used a web-enabled mobile phone to assist them in shopping. The survey also reported that 36% of those surveyed have used their phone to go to a web site to shop for products or services. Venda believes that brands and retailers must harness the opportunity mobile presents in a comprehensive and scalable manner to match customer expectations. Most current mCommerce offerings deliver generic first-generation mobile sites that are hard-coded to web sites. Venda A.M.P. allows brands to fully deliver a cross platform personalized commerce experience to any customer at any location.

Like all Venda offerings, Venda A.M.P. leverages an underlying SaaS model that ensures clients receive future-proofed, enterprise-scale technology supported by a global development and client care network, giving them the autonomy to more effectively manage their front-end user experience.

Digby's singular focus on retail aligns with Venda's legacy of enabling a deeper and richer approach to commerce for brands. Integrating seamlessly with inventory, catalog and historical order information housed in the Venda platform, Venda A.M.P. will drive brand efforts to identify, customize and incentivize a customer while they are in-store, at home or on-the-go for "dramatic improvements in the customer experience." With Venda A.M.P., merchants can:

• Enable Website viewing on mobile devices including iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Blackberry and Android while coping with the constant innovation cycle of new mobile devices, operating systems and screen sizes/resolutions;
• Run geo- and time-specific marketing and eCommerce programs with location targeting capabilities;
• Deliver highly-personalized and sophisticated "Rich Mobile Web" experiences;
• Enable a fully-transactional mobile (search, shop, buy, pay, service) experience with an expanding universe of "must-have" capabilities like:
• In-store check-ins with timely and personalized offers pushed directly to a user's device;
• Bar code scanning for pricing and comparison information via mobile phone cameras to share with friends via Facebook;
• Wish-list and registry management, product reviews, order status and stock availability

 "Our vision for hosted eCommerce is to free our clients to engage with their customers in a more meaningful, direct and cost-effective way, making Digby's mobile technology a perfect strategic fit in terms of features, operations, support and cost," said Jeffrey Max, CEO of Venda, Inc. "Brands that thrive in the future will embrace mobile as a unifying customer experience, and with Venda A.M.P. they will be able to focus on delighting customers with the comfort that our platform will continue to scale and mature alongside their business."

Good Questions About Net Neutrality

The subject of "Net Neutrality" has been much in the news, in response to Google and Verizon's joint proposal on the subject. If you are interested, Mark Underwood offers a thorough background on the subject at Tech Republic, with a set of seven very sane questions.

Blue Harbor Grows with Fulfillment by Amazon

eTailer Blue Harbor started using  Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Amazon WebStore services in the third quarter of 2009, two years after setting up business in New Jersey, which led to a spike in online sales averaging 40 percent to 65 percent for each product listed on Amazon.com for fulfillment with FBA.

The first spike in sales on Amazon occurred when they won the "Buy Box" in their category. The second, and perhaps more important, was when they started using FBA.

Getting set up was straightforward and the user interface walked them through the process for listing and shipping inventory to Amazon's fulfillment center. With Amazon handling customer service questions, Blue Harbor can focus more on sourcing and sales of their products.

For more details, see the full story here.