Mobile Commerce Strategies - Contextually Relevant Opportunities, Moments and Environments
In the early 1990s major retailers began investing in data analytics to better manage their stores and warehouses by analyzing individual store sales. This insight gave them a perspective on the needs of the local market. Retailers soon advanced in their use of analytics and added external factors for consideration and planning like demographics, weather, geography, local events and competitor's promotions and campaigns. When customer loyalty programs tied to POS (point of sale) systems were implemented, retailers were able to start understanding individual customers through their transaction histories - at least what individuals bought from their stores. The limitation, however, was this data was known and analyzed post-sales. There were no mechanisms in place to alert retailers to help customers during their path-to-purchase journeys. Mobile computing technologies and wireless internet access introduced the age of mobile commerce. Mobile commerce enables retailers unprece