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While both iBeacon™ and Physical Web™ beacons provide context to mobile interactions, the use cases are different. Same goes for their deployment strategies.

Reverse Showrooming: A Look at the Other Side showrooming, the consumer behavior of browsing brick-and-mortar stores to evaluate a product before purchasing it online. We warned traditional retailers of this threat to in-store sales and suggested ways to combat the popular behavior. Although brick-and-mortar retailers may have seemed doomed by the prevalence of showrooming, recent studies paint a more hopeful picture. The Data “Reverse showrooming” (or “webrooming”) has actually been reported to be more common than showrooming. As the name suggests, reverse showrooming is the consumer behavior of researching a product online before purchasing it in-store. In a 2013 Harris Poll survey, roughly 69% of 2,000 American adults reported having engaged in reverse showrooming, compared to 46% for showrooming. Moreover, when a 2013 Urban Land Institute survey asked over 1,000 Americans ages 18-35 about their preferred way to buy electronics, shoes and cosmetics, more people responded that they preferred to reverse showroom than to showroom for those items. The survey also indicated that while showroomers spend an average of $174 when they make their ultimate purchase online, reverse showroomers spend an average of $204 when they buy in-store. These numbers should be encouraging to traditional retailers, suggesting that the balance may be tilting in their favor. So where do reverse showroomers commonly begin and end their shopping experience? Perhaps not surprisingly, the online search usually starts with Amazon (the same destination where many showroomers end) and finishes at Walmart, Best Buy or Target (the same destinations where many showroomers begin). These shared destinations can be explained in part by the considerable overlap between the two groups – that is, many customers who showroom also reverse showroom, and vice versa. According to the same Harris Poll survey, nine in ten showroomers have reverse showroomed and six in ten reverse showroomers have showroomed. Reasons Behind Reverse Showrooming In general, understanding what drives consumers to shop the way they do is essential to any effective sales strategy. Some of the top reasons that reverse showroomers cite for buying a product in-store instead of online are: avoiding shipping costs; a desire to touch and feel the product; available inventory; and the ability to return the product to the store if needed. On the other hand, some of the top reasons people cite for buying online instead of in-store are: the availability of free shipping and online-only discounts; the lack of crowds and long check-out lines; and an easy-to-use website. Lessons for Retailers Armed with these types of data, brick and mortar retailers should feel better prepared to capitalize on reverse showrooming and attract sales to their stores instead of their competitors’ stores. Below are some suggestions: Have a good inventory monitoring system in place. Perhaps this one is too obvious to mention, but if a retailer does not have the product, the consumer will buy it from another store that does, or forgo buying at a store altogether. Create easy-to-use mobile applications and websites and set up in-store terminals that allow consumers to search for inventory, specifications, reviews, offers and coupons. Nielsen’s 2014 Digital Consumer Report estimates that 65% of Americans own a smartphone. And have no doubt that they will use it while in the store (even if they have already done some research beforehand). Great mobile applications/websites and designated terminals enhance the customer’s in-store shopping experience and keep the customer on the retailer’s own sites and content. Incorporate digital marketing programs in the stores. For example, Target has a website and mobile application called Cartwheel which generates offer codes online for consumers to use in-store only. And last holiday season, Nordstrom arranged its in-store displays based on top items pinned on Pinterest, demonstrating that it was listening to its audience and ensuring that those items were in stock. Integrate e-commerce conveniences with in-store ones. Online ordering and in-store pickup is a great example and one that more and more retailers are offering each day. Offer convenient, easy and secure in-store checkout. Eliminate one of the top-cited reasons people avoid stores: long check-out lines. Properly train sales staff. Many consumers still value having their questions answered by real human beings. In a 2013 Deloitte survey, more than half of respondents said knowledgeable in-store staff would make them more likely to buy in-store. As the suggestions above show, the response to reverse showrooming should not be too different from the response to showrooming (after all, the two behaviors are far from mutually exclusive). As our virtual and physical shopping experiences become increasingly merged through technology and consumers constantly move back and forth between the two worlds, traditional retailers should take an omni-channel approach to satisfy as many consumer desires as possible. Couretsy :retaillawadvisor

#webrooming #showrooming #reverse showrooming #in-store

The Physical Web is well positioned to become the universal proximity marketing and engagement platform that the market is seeking.

2016: Could this be the year of the Physical Web? The Physical Web is the Google-led initiative to bring location-based content and interaction to the mass market. It offers the browser as an alternative user interface to the app-based model made popular with the iBeacon, and it promises a model that can scale.

Tech Mahindra launches NFC-based wallet MoboMoney

Contactless payment through apps or sophisticated systems such as MoboMoney promise to make mobile transactions easier for retailers and customers in India.

Tech Mahindra, which got a mandate to start a payment bank from the Central Bank in August last year, has launched an electronic wallet called MoboMoney on Wednesday.

The company claims that it is the country’s first contact-less wallet, which works both at online as well as at brick and mortar stores.

Vivek Chandok, head – consumer businesses, Tech Mahindra said that the company is targeting 90 per cent of the economy which is based on cash instead of the 10 percent which already has access to the banking network.”

India’s first commercial NFC ecosystem rollout, MoboMoney allows consumers to load their wallet by paying cash at its 1000+ retail network, helping convert cash into e-cash.

The money loaded into the customers’ digital wallets can then be used to Tap n pay for over the counter payments, recharges, make bill payments, as well as pay online - converting what were earlier payments done in cash, into digital payments.

If the user wishes, he / she can link a bank account to the MoboMoney wallet and can retrieve the unspent amount from the wallet into the linked bank account.

The simplicity is in the Tap and Pay experience as against remembering complex syntax or having any knowledge of using the Internet or mobile application. It works irrespective whether it’s a smart phone or a feature phone,” added Chandok. (SOURCE: The Economic Times)

More on ‘MoboMoney’, India’s first contact-less digital payment ecosystem at TECH MAHINDRA site

#MoboMoney #mobile payments #tech mahindra #nfc

Beyond Push Notifications: What Can Beacons Do For Retail? - The obvious application of beacon technology is to push content – be it welcome greetings, discounts and special offers, product information, branded content or other alerts.

What else can beacons offer in-store? Based on the research in Forrester Research, Inc.’s March 2014 report The Emergence of Beacons in Retail Get Elastic believes there are 5 reasons retailers should look into the technology.

Customers as beacons

Beacons can facilitate person-to-person communication, which can be helpful for paging sales associates from within an app, rather than wandering around (like Uber for shopping!) Smart stores will dispatch sales associates to the right “department” based on their areas of expertise.

In-store navigation

Beacons can also support turn-by-turn directions to locate products. Combined with a voice or text search function, this can be very helpful for speedy grab-and-go shopping.

In-store nav can be useful if you have an app downloaded that syncs your Wish List or favorites, the ability to locate which ones actually exist in store, and to guide you to which products you’d like to view or purchase that day.

In-store analytics

Retailers are no doubt chomping at the bit to collect more data on in-store behavior to optimize merchandising. While there are many ways to do this currently, the connection to mobile has potential for tying habits to customer segments, such as cross-channel buyers, frequent visitors, customers of a certain age or sex, or out-of-town visitors.

Point-of-sale

PayPal Beacon notifies a retailer when an app-wielding customer enters the store, and a beacon located near point-of-sale interacts with the customer’s phone app to complete the transaction.

Cross-channel attribution

Beacon technology is a step towards closed-loop channel attribution where a marketer can measure the impact of mobile advertising exposure on in-store sales. For example, an ecommerce platform (through its mobile touchpoint) could pull location data based on a customer’s proximity to a beacon, and match it to previous exposures of an ad.

There remain a couple challenges here: 1) attribution can only be made across the segment of opted-in, tracked customers (incomplete data), and 2) beacons can’t track attention. Proximity to a beacon does not mean attention, neither does exposure to mobile advertising.

Retail beacon hurdles

Despite its potential, the biggest hurdle for retailers is perceived privacy. The success of beacon marketing and merchandising relies on enough opted-in users. Some studies suggest customers are highly resistant to being tracked in-store, even if it improves the customer experience.

Beyond privacy, beacon relevance and usability is also important.

Journalist Sébastien Page recounts his underwhelming experience at a Californian Apple store. Beacons welcomed him 5 times at different points in the store (including upon leaving), and product information did not come up when and where he expected.

Before implementing in-store beacons, it’s imperative to determine what content is most appropriate and relevant to deliver (and where), what the customer expects/wants (and doesn’t want) from the experience, and what veers into the gray area of spammy notifications. Your strategy should be informed at least in part from real customer input and testing.

blog appeared at Getelastic

#beacons

How Big Will Bluetooth Low Energy Beacons be in 2016?

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons are finally set to hit the mainstream in 2016, following a strong 2015 third quarter in shipment data and contract figures. Through its new research area, BLE Beacon Technologies and Services, ABI Research, a leader in technology market intelligence, tracks the BLE beacon contract and shipment data across more than 20 verticals. “ABI Research populated its contract tracker with a handful of impactful names in the last quarter, including IKEA, H&M, Macy’s, Target, Pizza Hut, Elle, Espirit, McDonalds and Carrefour,” says Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Meanwhile, companies like Groupon, Facebook and Google are starting to bring their SME beacon strategies to market. Adoption is now across the retail board with really strong interest from the Quick Serve Restaurants (QSR), as well as banking sectors.” Additionally, the Out of Home (OOH) advertising market is showing rapid expansion, with the first major deployments in Europe. Currently, Strӧer is announcing plans for 50,000 deployments in Germany, with Exterion Media following suit in Holland and the UK. “India is also a recent market adopter, with InteractionOne deploying a 1,000 beacon network,” continues Connolly. “We are also seeing some very large asset tracking contracts for BLE beacons in industrial, vending, hospital and airport market sectors.” Read ABI Research’s BLE Beacon Technologies, Applications and Revenues report. https://www.abiresearch.com/market-research/product/1022878-ble-beacon-technologies-applications-and-r/ Courtesy:ABI Research

#beacons #bluetooth low energy

72% of consumers said that a relevant mobile offer delivered to their smartphone while shopping in a store would significantly influence their likelihood to make a purchase.(According to Swirl’s research )

Responsive Web Design makes your web page look good on all devices (desktops, tablets, and phones).

A new study shows how consumers across the globe think about shopping online, what they are expecting and experiencing and what’s holding them back from buying more online and online mobile.

3 Seconds or less is the difference between a loyal customer and a lost one. Dyn surveyed more than 1400 consumers across 11 countries in North America, EMEA, and APAC to understand their shopping preferences, what they’re expecting, and what they're experiencing. We learned what is holding them back from buying more online and on mobile, plus what retailers need to do to turn skeptical consumers into longstanding customers. Download this report to get the results http://bit.ly/1Q9wkwD and learn: The state of online shopping How slow websites and security concerns hinder online shopping growth Why retailers struggle to fulfill promises of a consistent, omnichannel experience Whether consumers are willing to shop more across international borders

#mobile ecommerece #mobile shopping #online #shopping

Lost Bag ! Lost Laptop!Lost Phone! No problem! keep forgetting................ OORT will help you reminding you about your belongings and articles .

#bluetooth smart

Why Progressive Web Apps Are The Future Of Web Development

Progressive Web Apps” is an umbrella term for modern, performant web apps that cleverly take advantage of technologies like web manifest, push notifications, service worker, responsive web design, etc. to provide a top-tier experience on mobile. The latest high-profile “progressive web app” example is of course the recently launched Flipkart Lite website, which was presented in a dedicated session at the summit.

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