Shop-By-Phone Takes On New Meaning
Monday, April 24th, 2006 at 5:10 pm by Jeffrey Perren, AC Magazine
According to an In-Stat study, as many as 25 million may be using their mobile phones as mobile wallets by 2011. Previous attempts to get users to shop-by-phone in a new way didn’t fare well.
(For those under 30, shopping by phone — i.e. buying from real paper catalogs used to be enormously popular. It still is, though it gets a lot less press in the 1st century AG (after-Google founding) Era. For example, one major retailer in the Northwest U.S. employs over 300 customer service reps just to take orders. Even for them, though, online purchases represent a third of sales these days.)
But with color-screen phones that have excellent resolution, along with a Google or Yahoo! Local, etc, the technology to make it work just might be there this time.
Most users resist the idea primarily due to added fees for mobile shopping services. But telecom vendors and merchants will soon get wise to the idea that those fees are foolish and unnecessary. Take a cut off the back end from the merchant and sales will rise to more than cover both parties’ costs.
At the same time, mobile phone users are increasing their browsing activity. (At least among the 18-34 crowd.) In Japan, for example. 40% of adults browse the net using their “wireless handset”. And more than 90% of households in Japan, Korea, and urban China have at least one mobile phone. In Western Europe, the figure is 80%.
Internet spending in non-U.S. countries is rising. In some cases, more than others, but in the UK, India, Germany, and Japan the numbers are rising fast.
Of course, even if when they’re not out and about they’ll still want to shop online. That may be occurring more in the near future with gas prices reaching record highs, after their last record‑highs, (which were higher than… well, you get the idea).
According to a recent Shopzilla survey 50% of consumers said higher gasoline prices will motivate them to shop more online.
So, affiliate marketers can expect a healthy year, provided they don’t have to spend all their profits at the pump. If they do, I’m sure they can find a use for that mobile phone.
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