M-Commerce Fast Fact: The Rise is Here
The emerging rate of mobile commerce in global industry is massive with every brand racing to adopt the practice in their marketing portfolio.
I’m sure you’ve heard of ‘Mobile Commerce’. What is it actually? Kevin Duffey defined Mobile Commerce as “the delivery of electronic commerce capabilities directly into the consumer’s hand, anywhere via wireless technology”. Meanwhile, many of us choose to think of Mobile Commerce as “a retail outlet in customer’s pocket.”
In the old e-commerce world that we know, customer has to be in front of computer and click through each page with a mouse in order to make a purchase. Fast forward to the era of M-Commerce that we are in right now, advantages of mobility are exploited and still being developed continuously. With just a few taps on the screen, customers can perform business transactions practically anywhere for 24/7.
Aside from encouraging more sales, M-Commerce also comprehensively increases the simplicity and security of transaction. Remember in the old days when we have to type in credit card info repetitively to make a purchase? To be honest, sometimes I even found the activity to be annoying and tedious. Not to mention, we risk the chance of information leak all the same. Well, not anymore. The capabilities of M-Commerce today, are personalized and explored way more extensively in a sense that smartphones nowadays not only offer multi-level authentication, but also bio-metric authentication, such as via retina scans, facial recognition or fingerprints, etc.
We also have to acknowledge that M-commerce brings tremendous pros for companies. It helps firms to reach customers regardless boundary, identify their persona, and keep track of their demographic data and locations, all thanks to functions like GPS, WiFi, and so on. As a result, companies can provide location-specific content and personalized information easily.
The point is, M-Commerce is poised to burst into the mainstream thanks to a host of technological advance that makes it practical for people to shop at their fingertips. The penetration rate is especially strong among younger generation, who are highly addicted to mobile devices and online commerce. In fact, it is not exaggerating to say that mobile technology would become synonymous with youth lifestyle in the future.
Lastly, according to Business Insider Intelligence report, over 29% of mobile users make a purchase with their phones, and it is predicted that M-Commerce will reach $284 billion or 45% of the total U.S. e-commerce market, by 2020. Clearly, web traffic conducted on smartphones has been long surpassing that on computers and like it or not, the gap is expanding.
