This is part two of a blog post regarding Mary Meeker’s 2009 Web 2.0 presentation and implications for retailers.  For me, there are six key takeaways:

1.  Your customers will increasingly carry massive computing power and, via the cloud, access to any information and services they want.  You need to make them value yours vs. some third party price comparison site.   Build and deploy valuable applications that support the customer through the buying cycle from search, to store, to purchase.

2.  Customers will expect Wi-Fi service at every retail location.  I know there are issues.  Provide it anyway.

3.  Location, location, location.  Not yours; your customers.  Knowing the customers location will enable entirely new ways of communicating and fostering a relationship with them.   Be careful.   You need to offer value for this information.   If you use this information to spam them, the opportunity for conversation will be lost for a very long time.

4.  Ready or not, devices like the iPhone are coming to the retail enterprise.  People are using them in their daily lives and will see the value of using them at work.  Security and other concerns need to be addressed, but departments and business units will push retail CIO’s to incorporate these tools sooner rather than later.

5.  The information kiosk is dead.  The customer is carrying the next generation kiosk with them.  Make this part of your mobile commerce strategy.

6.  As in Japan, mobile commerce will represent the fastest growing channel for multi-channel retailers.  I know; we’ve been talking about mobile commerce for a decade.  The iPhone changed everything.  If you don’t have a mobile commerce strategy.  You need to develop one – now.

Tags: Mobile, Mobile Commerce, Retail, Technology

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Mobile, Mobile Commerce, Retail, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.