Mobile apps not a silver bullet?
A recent discussion article on RetailWire.com entitled “The Fallacy of the Connected Consumer’s Love of Mobile Apps” by Rick Moss daws on some interesting research to show that mobile may not be the silver bullet that many retailers and industry players have previously thought.
According to the report, Meet the Connected Consumer: How Tablets, Smartphones and Facebook are Changing the Ways Consumers Shop, only 4% of respondents shoppped within an app on the phone. Furthermore, only 14% shopped using their smartphones compared to 87% who used their PC’s.
The report focuses on the fact that by far most shoppers choose to shop via PC, tablet or mobile websites over mobile apps.
The rest of the post goes on to explore the potential explanation behind the report results, stating that perhaps the inconvenience of having to download a specific app in contrast to accessing a mobile site may, in part, explain these results.
Although these are telling results retailers need to consider a holistic approach to addressing shoppers online. Any solution needs to consider all aspects of the online ecosystem and specifically address the use case relavant to each delivery mechanism. For instance browsing for products is more conducive to PC and tablet use, where as product comparisons and substitution could be more applicable to scanning enabled smartphones.
How these different tools interact with each other is imperative to any retailer solution. Presently in grocery there are few examples of this holistic approach. But it won’t be long before we start seeing some truly valuable offerings.
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