Brick and Mortar Retailers Take Advantage of Mobile but NFC
Payments Low on Priority List
Boston, MA - March 19, 2013 - Strategy Analytics’ report
“
67
percent of Smartphone Owners Use Devices In-Store - Consumer and
Retailer Mobile Needs Explored” examines the future of mobile
commerce and highlights mobile connectivity as both a key challenge
and opportunity for under pressure brick and mortar retailers. The
mobile industry has focused on technologies such as NFC for
payments, rather than creating a successful value proposition for
consumer and retailers. Meanwhile, consumers are already using
mobile technology in stores to find better deals elsewhere,
locating competing retailers and comparing prices with online
stores.
The results from the Strategy Analytics consumer survey,
conducted in the US, UK and China, showed that
smartphone owners were much more likely than feature phone owners
to use their devices either while shopping or for shopping. Usage
at home demonstrates that smartphones are frequently used for
research on products. Sixty one percent of smartphone owners use
the device for shopping at home. Usage while out and about shows a
very similar pattern to usage at home, although slightly more users
overall have used their smartphone while out and about (67 percent
compared to 61 percent). The least popular shopping activity on all
devices is the actual point of purchase itself.
David MacQueen, Director of the
Wireless Media Strategies research program, noted, “Brick and
mortar retailers are not waiting for carriers or OEMs to roll out
mobile payments and are leveraging mobile solutions already in the
market, such as mobile advertising, couponing, loyalty cards and
alternative payments, to drive footfall in stores, and convert that
footfall into revenues.”
Nitesh Patel, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics added, “A lot
of the mobile industry’s focus on mobile’s place in the retail
environment has been around contactless payments enabled by NFC
technology. The ramp up is extremely slow and even years from now
we are expecting only a minority of consumers will use mobile
payments; our
Mobile Contactless Payments Forecast predicts 158M users, or
2.9 percent of total cellular users in 2017. This simply does not
compare with the opportunity in the market today for the mobile
industry to assist the ailing retail sector.”
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