While 67% of shoppers say they are likely to choose a retailer that offers mobile coupons over one that doesn’t offer them, only 40% of retailers indicate that offering coupons or discounts is a key feature of their mobile offering, according to BRP.
In the BRP special report, titled: The Mobilization of Retail, the features retailers highlight most often include:
- Item availability/visibility (53%);
- Product information (51%);
- Customer service (47%); and
- Loyalty/rewards (33%).
Up to 41% of retailers say refining the mobile shopping experience is a top priority for ensuring they meet customers’ expectations, and there’s still plenty of room to make the mobile shopping experience better. For example, 53% of retailers have implemented suggestive selling/product recommendations but say the feature needs improvement. only 9% have implemented them and say they’re working well.
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Even their mobile web site and mobile app, which are the top two implemented capabilities retailers say have been working well (at 26% and 21% respectively) have a long way to go. As many as 42% think their site needs improvement, while 26% admit their app could be better.
The next step for retailers — one they still haven’t been able to accomplish outside of select areas — is using mobile technology to identify customers when they walk into the store. Even with limited deployments of such solutions, a large proportion of consumers — 39% — already are comfortable with the concept of retailers using mobile identification to personalize their in-store experience.
The most prevalent technologies that retailers are currently using to identify customers are WiFi (19%), and beacons (9%), with 19% of retailers using other technologies, although in all cases there is much room for improvement. In fact, only 5% say WiFi works well in identifying shoppers in-store. Within two years, 61% of retailers plan to use WiFi, 42% plan to use beacons, and 55% plan to use other technologies for mobile customer identification.
