The Latest Trends in Mobile Commerce that You Can't Miss

In a recent survey, conducted by Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work and Cognizant's retail practice, we found that of 5,000 people who make online purchases at least a few times each year, 68.1% (3,918) make online purchases at least once a month.  Out of this group, here are the age breakdowns:
  • 71.6% of 18-24 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 77.3% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
  • 79.8% of 25-34 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 82.2% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
  • 74.1% of 35-44 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 79.9% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
  • 69.7% of 45-54 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 75.7% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
  • 61.6% of 55-64 year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 68.2% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
  • 55.2% of 65+ year olds make online purchases at least once a month, and 61.8% of these report using mobile devices at least as much as desktop/laptops for online purchases.
These are interesting numbers, but not necessarily unexpected.  The biggest discoveries in the data are found in the behavioral differences of mobile consumers.  E-Commerce or website based online commerce has been around for over 15 years, and most retail companies have been interacting with their markets via websites long enough to have a solid understanding of online behaviors, but mobile commerce is still new and dynamic enough that uncertainties remain.

Here are a few interesting findings I discovered while researching for my latest report on Mobile Consumer Behaviors and the Retail Experience.
  • 24% of 5,000 survey participants, report they research and/or compare prices using a mobile device while shopping in-store most of the time to every time - 44% rarely to never do.
  • Survey participants that use mobile devices at least equal to desktops/laptops, shop online once or more a week at a rate 82% higher than desktop/laptop users.
  • Mobile shoppers conduct research late at night at a rate 46.1% higher than desktop/laptop online shoppers.  That makes sense, desktops are kind of heavy to take with you to bed.
After my first couple of passes through this new data, it is obvious there are significant behavioral differences between mobile shoppers, desktop/laptop shoppers and offline shoppers.  These behavioral differences, given the rapid growth of mobile commerce, must be understood and integrated into sales and marketing systems and strategies in order to maximize success.

If your company is involved in retail and mobile commerce and would like to meet and review all of my latest findings, please contact me here.

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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Mobile Apps - Personalizing While Respecting Personal Privacy

All the data I have been reading this week suggest mobile users want and value a personalized experience on their mobile apps or mobile website, but on the other hand they don't like giving up their personal data.  That means it is imperative to find the right balance so a mutually satisfying relationship can be fostered.  As we all know, the more data you have on an individual, the easier it is to configure a personalized experience.

In a fresh Cognizant survey this week involving 5,000 participants, 68% reported they are willing to provide information on their gender, 55% their age, and 65% their brand and product preferences, but the majority are not in favor of volunteering much else.  That is an interesting answer since 80% of the same survey participants belong to one or more loyalty and rewards programs, and the biggest reasons according to 74% are the points or rewards for each dollar spent.  The second biggest motivation was automatic discounts for loyalty program members.  That tells us there is a willingness to give up some level of data privacy if the rewards and discounts are valuable enough.

Mobile retailers need to find out how much personal data is worth to their customer base.  They need to give up enough in points, rewards and discounts to motivate the sharing of more in depth personal data.  Collecting data on social media is not the answer.  In my research, consumers don't like the idea of any kind of data collection for marketing purposes from their social media activities.  It makes them mad.  Mad is not a feeling a consumer products company wants to elicit from their customers.

It seems to me that a bold, transparent process would be best.  The online and mobile retailer should place a value on data.  For example:
  • Answer 10 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 10% off your purchases.
  • Answer 20 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 20% off your purchases.
  • Answer 30 specific questions about yourself and your preferences, and I will give you an automatic 30% off your purchases.
Whatever the real value, we all agree that there is a value to data.  Finding the real value, and transparently using that information to provide a personalized user experience, benefits all parties.

I think IoT (Internet of Things) sensors may also play a role in data collection and personalization. Rather than make people uncomfortable by tracking more personal data, sensors can track product data and that can be used to provide a personalized experience for the owner of the product.  Here is an example - a man buys a bass fishing boat and a service agreement.  Sensors (as defined in the service agreement) collects data on the boat engine.  Information such as:
  • Locations
  • Activities
  • Usage profiles
  • Hours of operations
  • Data and time
  • etc.
The boat engine information is added to the customer's profile to provide a "boater's profile" that can be used to personalize online and mobile experiences.

Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict.
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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Speed, Personalization, Analytics and Enterprise Information Systems

Ninety percent of 18-34 years old strongly value a personalized mobile and web experience, and eighty-two percent of of those over 45 years old value personalization.  What kind of personalization?  Forty-seven percent of shoppers prefer location or time-based personalization in mobile applications or websites.  In other words, don't show me things that are not available for me to purchase in Boise at this time, or that I don't like!  Given this survey data we all know what needs to be done and are taking the necessary steps to be able to offer personalization, right?  Wrong it seems.  Many companies are not using available data to understand their customers better so they can provide them with contextually relevant and personalized mobile application experiences.

My colleague, Benjamin Pring, at Cognizant's Center for the Future of Work recently published a research paper titled Putting the Experience in Digital Customer Experience.  In his research he found fewer than 20% of respondents use analytics generated by application programming interface (API) traffic to understand their customers’ online and offline purchase journeys.  Just 41% of respondents in the retail industry say they will be effective at analyzing customer metadata by 2017.  A mere 42% of respondents say they have adequate tools and skills to analyze digitally generated data.  Only one-third of respondents have made adjustments to their business model to pursue strategies driven by digital information about their customers.

An additional challenge, is that personalizing mobile user experiences takes speed, speed many do not have available in their current IT environments.  As organizations begin developing mobile strategies and implementing mobile apps, they quickly realize simply developing and deploying basic mobile apps, infrastructure and frameworks is not enough.  They must push further and implement a real-time enterprise to remain competitive.  This real-time requirement is at the root of many problems.  Eighty-four percent of survey participants reported they have IT systems too slow or incapable of supporting real-time mobility, which negatively impacts mobile app performance and the user’s experience.

We have some more work to do.


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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Monitoring an Ear of Corn with an IoT Sensor?

Once upon a time, farmers would walk through a field or ride a horse around it to determine the amount of fertilizer and water their crops required.  I have done this myself.  Today agricultural drones with sensors and analysis software can fly over large fields and analyze the crops and their needs precisely in seconds.  If we wanted to get even more ambitious, we could place an IoT (Internet of Things) sensor next to every stalk of corn to monitor and optimize its growth.  Although these steps are all feasible today, some are not yet economically advantageous.  That might, however, soon change.  In the past, we treated crops in aggregate. Today, we can customize how we treat each section of a crop due to the benefits of sensors.

Globally, we will need to feed 8 billion people by 2030 and 9 billion by 2050.  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that, under current production and consumption trends, global food production must increase 60 percent by 2050 in order to meet the demands of the growing world population.  That's only 35 years away!!!

Another fact, over 25-40% of our food spoils or is lost before it can be consumed (source http://www.foodwastealliance.org/about-our-work/assessment/).  This is a massive amount of waste and inefficiency that no one wants and IoT sensors can help us reduce food waste.

Do you see, as I do, the need for a digital transformation in agriculture, food processing and delivery? The Internet of Things is not just the newest gadget for us to play with, it can mean the difference between life and death for many people.  Data collected through sensors and analyzed to help optimize growth, harvesting, processing, delivery and consumption may just be the solution we need.



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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

Top 11 Articles on IoT, Mobility, Code Halos and Digital Transformation Strategies

Most of the stuff I write is rubbish, but these 11 articles beat the odds and are actually worth reading. You can find my complete Top 40 list here. Enjoy!

  1. Mobile Apps, Blind Spots, Tomatoes and IoT Sensors
  2. IoT Sensors, Nerves for Robots and the Industrial Internet
  3. Sensors - Sensing and Sharing the Physical World
  4. IoT Sensors, Tactile Feedback, iPhones and Digital Transformation
  5. IoT, Software Robots, Mobile Apps and Network Centric Operations
  6. Networked Field Services and Real-Time Decision Making
  7. Thinking About Enterprise Mobility, Digital Transformation and Doctrine
  8. GEOINT, GIS, Google Field Trip and Digital Transformation
  9. Connecting the Dots Between Enterprise Mobility and IoT
  10. Merging the Physical with the Digital for Optimized Productivity
  11. IoT Sensors Extend Our Physical Senses Beyond Our Physical Reach
You can find my Top 75 articles on Mobile Strategies here.

************************************************************************
Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work Cognizant
View my profile on LinkedIn
Learn about mobile strategies at MobileEnterpriseStrategies.com
Follow me on Twitter @krbenedict
Subscribe to Kevin'sYouTube Channel
Join the Linkedin Group Strategic Enterprise Mobility
Join the Google+ Community Mobile Enterprise Strategies

***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.

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