Mobile: Beyond the Advertising Option (Part 1.)

The former Czechoslovakia had its velvet revolution, when the citizenry rose up and ‘gently’ swept the old regime into the dust bin. By comparison, this so-called mobile revolution, with its expectation of providing another billion-dollar advertising opportunity, has been like encouraging social change using the tactic of house-to-house fighting!

I believe the third screen is an increasingly important medium, and will have a role (though not a dominant one) to play in how we consume media content.

More immediately, mobile technology, particularly mobile broadband, has an exciting role to play in linking customer and sales data with incentive programs, better informing consumers about the location and extent of retail offerings, as well as empowering individuals to impact the sales dynamic through collaborative efforts.

In the context of retail (including retail property operators), all roads lead to three dominant technology plays. These include data collection and mining, wireless applications and customer behavioural targeting; the latter encompassing online, wireless and the individual’s physical environment. Conceptually, these technologies, and subsequent implementation across retail outlets and complexes, will be guided by the following principles:

a) Providing the consumer with almost ‘perfect’ knowledge about their shopping environment;

b) Optimising the retail experience so that there are cost savings associated with economies of scale and search, and

c) Community integration, where like-minded consumers are free to congregate in a digital forum to collaborate on their user experiences, including feedback on services and products.

Let’s take ‘Perfect Knowledge’ first.

Empowering the customer with greater knowledge about their retail environment is consistent with supporting the business goals of more regular patronage, higher share-of-wallet, and a wider spread of that spend across multiple retail outlets.

For example, being alerted about a 25% vacancy rate in the centre’s car park (with most vacancies on level 3, for example) via SMS would most likely prompt customers to schedule a drive to their shopping centre when the convenience factor was relatively high.

Or, informing customers about exactly where and when every discount sale was occurring as they walked through the front doors of their department store or local shopping centre – again illustrating how ‘knowledge’ facilitates and prolongs the transaction process. With an appropriate level of innovation, a customer’s heightened awareness of the activity associated with their retail experience inevitably leads to higher satisfaction levels more often.