By Gary Hartley, general manager – sector development – GS1 New Zealand.
Study warns retailers about consumers’ use of smartphones.
In NZ FOODtechnology’s July 2010 issue, I wrote an article titled “Dial M for m-Commerce.” I started by suggesting that the future of retailing could be in our hands – literally. I went on to discuss how the mobile phone most of us carry around – in fact, we probably couldn’t work or socialise without – could increasingly become a multi-purpose tool in the consumer marketplace. I don’t usually like making predictions, especially about the future – but this time I think I got pretty close.
A lot has happened with smartphones in the past year. A new Australian-based study from Stamford Interactive predicts mobile internet users will overtake desktop users within the next two years. This is surely a global prediction. The world now has almost four billion mobiles, about 40 per cent of the global population carries one (and updates it, on average, every 18 months) and 750 million of those phones are routinely used to access the internet.
At the same time, the mobile phone has become increasingly sophisticated: handsets with cameras, music players, bar code scanners, GPS receivers, RFID readers and other uses that lie well beyond simple text messaging and voice calling. All these features are, of course, enabled by the explosive growth now underway in wireless broadband infrastructure through most of the developed world and even in parts of the developing world.
A recent Stamford Interactive study focused on the unpreparedness of Australian retailers to adapt to the smartphone use tsunami. The analysis reported an “alarming 74 per cent of Australian retailers haven’t caught on and aren’t mobile assessable – meaning they’re losing out on sales to more savvy operators overseas”. So, just 26 per cent of those Australian companies surveyed were ‘mobile friendly’, meaning they provided quick access to useful information in a form that was smartphone friendly, easy to read and understand for consumers on-the-run.
We’re in the era of the new normal – a digital revolution where the consumer is mobile savvy and looking for quick information accessed easily. The type of information typically wanted is more in-depth information about a product, including ingredients, calories, allergy information, and so on. Another favourite consumer requirement is being able to authenticate product information where phones are used to check whether or not a product is genuine or not. These requirements are all plausible of course but for other highly plausible applications to develop, I think the world needs one more, now vital element – a standardised, open and neutral infrastructure that hosts information that is trusted by both businesses and consumers. Having a ‘corporate truth’, a repository of accurate and validated information about product identification, manufacturer/ producer authentication, their locations and processes must become the substance of authentic m-commerce. The absence of this standardised environment lends itself to the truth being what you find with a Google search.
There is no doubt that the mobile phone is at the centre of technology convergence and will increasingly be the means by which we access the Internet. With the millions of mobile services in New Zealand, consumers are increasingly using their smartphones to research product information and purchase online, often bypassing desktop computers. The trend will grow. It’s an exciting future built around the mobile phones we already have to hand. The challenge is to get there efficiently and at least cost by using other tools we also have at our fingertips, trusted global standards included.
