By 2015, companies will generate 50% of Web sales via their social presence and mobile applications.

Gartner latest predictions include a projection for a large increase in sales via mobile and social networks.

www.gartner.com

Market Implications:

• E-commerce providers of all types are offering mobile e-commerce capabilities, such as SMS for couponing, improvements for mobile browser usage of their sites and mobile shopping applications. These vendors will vie for organizations’ mobile initiatives, and their success will be driven by how well they help mobile customers make purchases easily, and by tapping into their social network connections.

• Enterprises will be challenged with determining customer expectations for mobile and social capabilities. The organization will need to enable a useful customer experience that keeps the customer from “unfriending” the organization socially, “opting out” of SMS offers or deleting its mobile application.

Related Research:

• “User Survey Analysis: Evolution of Consumer Internet Preferences”

• “User Survey Analysis: Social Media Adoption Trends”

Q1. What would current on-line retailers need to do to keep up with this trend?

Q2. Why would consumers have a retailer or business as a social network 'friend'?

They Know Where You Are and What You Like

Mobile phones and other mobile devices have the ability to determine the geographical position of the device at any time. As well, this position can be sent to somebody else via the internet. If this 'somebody' else is an advertiser or marketer then interesting opportunities for marketing arise.

Smartphones could soon reveal a person's every move

February 21, 2011

The Age - Julian Lee

"The ability to combine a person's location at any given time with which websites or mobile applications they have visited on their smartphone's browser is opening a new world of possibilities for marketers. Within the next year, half the mobile phones in use will be smartphones such as Apple's iPhone or Samsung's Galaxy, embedded with technology that can pinpoint your position to within a metre."

The director of mobile advertising at Google, Michael Slinger, says: ''Location will be one of the cornerstones of mobile advertising. Merging local businesses with mobile [advertising] is very, very important for us.''

Q1. What are the privacy issues?

Q2. What value is geo-positioning to the consumer?

Q3. Describe one way a business could use geo-positioning for marketing.

Digital Music - Sony Business Model

Sony offers unlimited music for $12.99 a month as Aussie chief left red-faced

The Age

Asher Moses

February 18, 2011

"Sony's new service, which officially opens for business in Australia, New Zealand and the US today after launching in Europe late last year, is dubbed Music Unlimited and provides access to six million songs.The service will go head-to-head with iTunes but unlike on Apple's service, where consumers download individual tracks to their computers, Music Unlimited tracks are streamed from the web, so users can't store them. The $12.99 premium plan provides unlimited access to any music while the $4.99 basic plan works like an ad-free radio station whereby users can select the genre or era but not the individual song."

Q1. What would be the attraction of the 'Music Unlimited' plan?

Q2. What is happening to CD sales?

Q3. Why are Digital music sales declining?