Next Generation Technologies for Mobile Commerce

Mobile Commerce has been one of the fastest growing aspects of electronic commerce. It involves the use of smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices to conduct commercial transactions.

While mobile commerce has been growing, often smaller companies are unaware of the potential for enhanced marketing techniques or if aware, are fearful that such techniques will require too much of an investment in technical IT resources.

Enhanced marketing techniques depend on adopting mobile apps that enable some interaction with the customers, such as trying out products in some way, perhaps on a virtual basis, or enabling location based services to gain certain benefits.

The idea is that the mobile devices generate data that can be revealing about the actions and preferences of the customer.

Collecting such data is becoming easier with the development of new apps that involve some such interaction.  However, the issue that arises is how to make use of these data. That's where big data analytics, particularly predictive analytics.

The ability to implement predictive analytics on big data gathered from a wide variety of mobile devices is something that takes some preparation but is becoming increasingly important to the success of mobile e-commerce and therefore to the success of most companies selling products to the public.

Customers will expect marketing efforts directed their way to be customized to their needs and habits, and this is only possible by having the company adopt mobile apps that can collect big data and develop the ability to use analytics to generate those customized marketing techniques.

Frost and Sullivan recently released a useful research report titled "Next Generation Technologies for Mobile E-commerce" which explores these issues and provides some useful guidance. Some interesting summaries of this report can be found at Information Week and on the Frost and Sullivan website.

Mobile Commerce, big data analytics and customized marketing are coming together to create important changes in customer relations.