Consumer adoption of smartphones and highly functional mobile devices is slowly but surely changing the way consumers shop.
According to Nielsen’s “The Digital Consumer” report, nearly two-thirds of U.S. consumers have smartphones.
With consumers having access to what are essentially pocket-sized computers at all times, what can merchants do to better engage them in the online and offline world of retail?
Amy Parsons, Vice President of Strategic Merchant Relations at Discover Financial Services, and a keynote speaker at the 2014 Mobile Payments Conference, says that technology is “allowing people to do things simultaneously.”
This means that if a customer is in your store, they could be on their smartphones looking for deals, comparing products, and even searching for better prices among competitors.
Retailers have to adapt or die and there are several emerging technologies that retailers can take advantage of to stay ahead of the curve.
Ms. Parsons says that retailers should “evaluate their brick-and-mortar environment and think about the mobile point-of-sale environment that’s starting to exist out there today.”
With new mobile wallets entering the marketplace, and the NFC payment abilities that most smartphones have supported for quite some time coming to the forefront, the mPOS is becoming a critical component of the customer experience.
Nordstrom offers a mPOS solution that, Ms. Parsons says, “allows for its customers to try on shoes, and Nordstrom can literally bring the bags over to you with a receipt and transact everything with you right where you’re currently standing.” It cuts down on waiting at the check out and makes the shopping experience much more enjoyable.
The mPOS also extends into the loyalty and offers capabilities that merchants can direct towards consumers, namely Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, further expanding upon in-store customer engagement.
Ms. Parsons also mentions big data as key to “understanding and putting consumer behaviors into context for merchants’ offline and online sales strategies.” Analytics are equally important to large-scale and small to medium sized merchants.
SMBs are not likely to have a whole department dedicated to analytics, but smaller merchants should look for an acquirer that can enable these services, and according to Ms. Parsons, “This is where our industry as a whole can really step into that consumer space – for the small to medium merchants – and help that merchant do the same thing that these big retailers are doing on their own.”
Outside of technology, retailers should also understand consumer behavior, and tailor their engagement strategy accordingly.
With consumers “showrooming,” or visiting a store to check out a product and then purchasing it online, merchants need to put as much effort into online retail as they do in their brick-and-mortar locations. “As a merchant, you have to make finding merchandise, adding it to your cart, and paying, simple,” Ms. Parsons said.
While at face-value, showrooming could be taken as detrimental to retailers, accepting and embracing showrooming can be a way to extend loyalty and engagement on mobile devices. “Walmart’s Savings Catcher is taking this to a new level and really driving their ‘everyday low price’ concept with mobile. It’s going to drive people right into their store to shop with the savings they can catch using the Walmart app,” Ms. Parsons said.
In terms of offers and loyalty rewards, merchants need to be careful not to annoy or turn off consumers by overextending their reach.
According to Ms. Parsons, “There are people that don’t want notifications pushed to their device, so when they hear in the news about beacons and geo-targeting or actually experience it, they automatically decide to turn this off.” On the other hand, some consumers find it helpful to receive offers based on their shopping preferences. To meet that demand, Discover’s cardmembers have the option to use Discover Deals, the company’s rewards platform available online and in a section of the Discover Mobile app where cardmembers can browse for relevant offers.
This emphasizes that it’s critical to understand a merchant’s consumer-base when undertaking any rewards or marketing campaign, and the importance of setting boundaries when engaging consumers through mobile.
Discover is also a proponent of partnerships to improve the payments industry as a whole. For example, by partnering with Ariba, Discover created a digitized B2B payments solution called AribaPay, aimed at eliminating paper checks and making procurement simpler for businesses.
In the end, no matter the size of the retailer, it’s necessary to understand the customer-facing and back-end technologies available to more efficiently conduct business, to better engage customers, and most importantly, to increase sales.
Amy Parsons, Vice President of Strategic Merchant Relations, Discover Financial Services
Amy Parsons is a speaker at this year’s Mobile Payments Conference in Skokie, Ill. where she will discuss reinventing retail for the mobile age. She is Vice President of the Strategic Merchant Relations team at Discover Financial Services. She is responsible for sales engagement and partnership development with Discover’s largest and most strategic merchant partners. Previously Ms. Parsons led Global Acceptance Business Development and Client Management with offices located in London, Paris, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Shortly after the acquisition of Diners Club International, Ms. Parsons had responsibility for managing a team that created a new global program that was activated within 12 months of inception and is now a worldwide network in over 100 countries. Throughout her many years of service with Discover Financial Services, Ms. Parsons has served in numerous capacities in marketing, sales, operations, training and product development. She has been instrumental in opening the Phoenix Network Services Center in 1994, as a member of the PULSE acquisition team and lead for integration at DFS in 2005, strategic insights for the Merchant Acquiring Program and lead for Business Development in 2006. She has over 25 years of experience in Payment Services with expertise in developing business opportunities and partnerships in the acquiring community. Ms. Parsons has also spent time at TSYS Acquiring Solutions providing strategic direction for new and existing products. She has recently relocated from London, England to the Chicago area and manages the business from the headquarter office in Riverwoods, IL.
Ms. Parsons received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Marketing from Arizona State University and her Masters in Business Administration through the Executive Program at the W.P. Carey School of Business.