The Mobile Commerce Explosion

Q1: Take a survey in one of your classes. What percentages of students own a smartphone? Gather some data regarding how they use their smartphones for shopping. Do they use a smartphone to compare prices? Do they use a smartphone to read product reviews? For what other shopping-related activities do they use their smartphones?

From the survey in MIS class, all the students own a smartphone. However, the most students usually do not use a smartphone for shopping. Only 20% of students use smartphone to shop. Students only use smartphones to compare prices between retail and only shop. After compare, if the price is within reasonable range, students are still prefer to shopping in the retail shop. There are 50% students mention that they are interested to shop from smartphone however they feel lack of protection and lack info about the cyber law protection. Student did use smartphone to read the review and they will comment about the product and rate it accordingly. 10% student have successfully sold their 2^nd hand shirt thru smartphone.

Q2: How do you think large brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy and Walmart can compete in a world quickly moving to smartphone-enhances shopping? Do you think smartphone-enhanced shopping will outgeously transform brick-and-mortar retail, perhaps putting many retail chains out of business? Why or why not?

Large brick-and-mortar retailers like Best Buy and Walmart can survive in the world now as they provide good services and reasonable price product and there are a lot of people enjoy window shopping. However, as the market of smartphone-enhances shopping is very new and big, they need to implement their traditional retail business and provide online selling as well as smartphone-enhances shopping. By having both smartphone-enhances shopping, and normal retail services, brick-and-mortar can bring their business into a higher level of income. I do not think smartphone-enhanced shopping will outgeously transform brick-and-mortar retail, perhaps putting many retail chains out of business. It only suggests the brick-and-mortar retail there is another way to sell their product. The reason behind this is because one of the reason people shopping in brick-and-mortar retailers is not only for shopping, but also to have fun and feel the atmosphere.  Besides, not everything can buy thru online, for example having a dinner in a romance atmosphere is not provided online yet.

Q3: Many retailers are creating proprietary in-store apps for shoppers. Some of these apps help shoppers find the location of products in the store, while other recommend  complementary products based on product searches. For an in-store app, say, for a Best Buy store, identify and describe three additional features that you believe shoppers would benefit from and encourage them to make purchases in the store.

 

Best Buy store could provide discount voucher for the user to buy selected item. Beside, the apps could have Q and A function so that customer could find the best product that they need buy answering or asking Question. Furthermore, the apps could have advertisement about the monthly promotion and let the user notice the promotion easily.

Q4: Ensure (www.esurance.com) has a slogan that states, “People when you want them, technology when you don’t.” This speaks very much to the increasing role of technology in customer service. What do you think about this? Can (and should) technology take over the primary customer-facing role for an organization, especially a retail store? Will stores like Nordstrom lose their competitive advantage based on superior customer service?

 

The slogan did say out the reality of the society. Customer usually only ask for services when they want or have facing problem while technology has take over all other function of customer service. For example, if we having lunch in a restaurant, we can take order, bill buy just pressing the computer. We will only ask for people services if we found the problem in the food or meal. However,   stores like Nordstrom will not lose their competitive advantage based on superior customer service as more is better. Even technology can overtake mostly customer function, customer still would prefer that there are better services provide from the workers in the shop compare to others.  This let them feel that they get what they have paid.

 Q5: What about people who can’t afford a smartphone? Will they be advantaged while shopping? When do you think smartphones will become affordable to all, say in the price range of $40 to $50?

In my opinion, for those who can’t afford to buy a smarphone get some disadvantages in updating the lasts review in the product or lastest promotion. They might miss the promotion as they will get the news much later then those who have smartphone. I am suggesting people to own a smartphone as nowadays, smartphone are affordable and the price range could as cheap as $40 to $50.