Jul 31, 2012
Mobile Search Shifting the Retail Sales Game
Heads up retailers, time to adapt to the quickly evolving shift in the sales cycle. As generation Y continues to move into the work force and become the future of global primary consumption, trends in buying behavior shift dramatically. Smartphones now out sell classic mobile phones for the first time in history and “those in the 25-34 age group showed the greatest proportion of smartphone ownership, with 66 percent saying they had a smartphone”1. This means that 66 percent of this demographic has the option between speaking with a sales associate for more information or being independent and searching for product reviews (good and bad) in-store via smartphone and by-pass the sales staff completely.
This should lead to an immediate demand for the retail industry to revise their sales strategy contemplating the following:
- Keeping this in mind for the future, how can we best prepare our sales division to sell in-store products and maintain a trusted relationship with our clientele?
- How can we ethically capitalize on online product reviews and achieve a marginal increase in sales?
- When and how will these changes be implemented company wide?
The mobile search and discovery market has been forecasted to generate $15B in the next 5 years which is nearly 3 times the revenue it expects to earn this year in 20122. What is your plan to grab a slice of this giant pie?
By Sam Rowe
Director, Digital Marketing
@spydersam
Category: Marketing
