News: Tablets becoming central to retail and online sales

According to a new report from Juniper Research,the value of remote transactions for digital and physical goods purchased via mobile devices is expected to exceed $730 billion (R5840 billion) annually by 2017.

The report, entitled Mobile Payments for Digital and Physical Goods: Opportunity Analysis 2012-2017, elaborated that as consumer tablet adoption continues to rise, there would be a significant migration from purchases being made on PCs and notebooks to tablets.

Even so, according to Juniper Research, transaction growth will be driven by the increasing scale of real-world (non-digital) purchases from major brands and retailers.

Couch potatoes, meet couch commerce

Interestingly, the report also noted that buyers are increasingly engaging in online shopping while watching TV. Indeed, it found the development of this ‘couch commerce’ trend would result in mobile and nomadic devices accounting for 30% of eRetail within five years.

However, it observed that such transactions would continue to comprise a small minority of a global retail sales marketplace, currently worth more than $16 trillion (R128 trillion).

“We have already moved towards a multitasking, multimedia environment which offers brands the opportunity for far greater engagement with consumers than was previously the case,” commented the report’s author, Dr Windsor Holden.

He continued that mobile is increasingly being deployed at all touch points in the retail process – including product discovery, product purchase and customer retention.

Retail and e-tail, married by mobile

Interestingly enough, mobile devices are expected to become a retail ‘hub’ of sorts, which marries remote (online) and physical purchases. One example given by the report to support this hypothesis is the eBay Fashion App and Image Swatch, where users can take or upload a photograph of an item to search for a product online.

Apparently, eBay is planning to enhance this application even further, by enabling users to compare prices and item availability both online and via partner bricks-and-mortar stores.

Stateside at least, the purchaser would then be able to pay for the item via PayPal before picking up the product from the local store.

To the point

Perhaps the most interesting part of the report is the rather obvious observation made within the accompanying white paper. In it, Juniper Research states that the days when the mobile handset was employed merely as a tool for voice and text communications are long since gone.

In other words, smartphones and tablets have changed the game, not only for manufacturers, IT, and business, but for industries that previously never had anything to do with mobile devices whatsoever.

Tablets becoming central to retail and online sales

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