M-commerce. As smartphones and tablets take over our lives brick-and-mortar stores and e-commerce sites are gearing up for the upcoming surge in shoppers to provide the ‘omni channel’ experience. Today shoppers use their smartphone and tablet devices to research their purchases, read reviews and ask about items others have purchased on social networking sites. This holiday season will see a rise in spending over previous years and mobile commerce alone is expected to rise to $17 Trillion by 2017. So what are retailers doing to upgrade their customers experience? One avenue is mobile point of sale that let’s a company extend it’s sales force with global reach. Tablets are mainly used, although smartphones will work as well, and access to the company’s entire inventory can be accessed anywhere on the planet. To close the sale, electronic payments can be processed at the point of sale with a credit card swipe reader. For larger companies with a local presence, new services are allowing that omni channel shopping experience with in store pickups, returns and exchanges.
Walmart for example now ships 10 percent of its orders from the store to the door. In store pickup is big this holiday season as well. Walmart and Target are set to facilitate in store pickups for e-commerce shoppers allowing them to bypass long checkout lines and take advantage of last minute sales. Much of this is in response to e-commerce giant Amazon. Amazon has many distribution centers but even with those, they can only ship in advance of Christmas. In store pickup can facilitate Christmas eve purchases that online e-commerce purchases cannot.
Much has to be done for smaller merchants to rise to that level of delivery. Software is needed to combine in store inventory with that of online inventory available. Stores also need equipment and space to give packing employees room to work orders. Sales staff need training to help shoppers place orders and even merchandising is typically brought in house where brick and mortar stores and e-commerce buying has been separate.
January 14th, 2022 by Admin