Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The 2015 holiday shopping season already is shaping up to be a gift for U.S. online retailers, based on IBM’s eighth annual Online Retail Readiness Report just out.

As the final tally of 2014 holiday shopping, online retail sales increased 13% from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday with the average order value reaching $125.

Mobile accounted for 21% of sales during last year’s holiday shopping season and IBM projects it will account for 26% this year.

Mobile traffic to U.S. retail websites reached 47% in March of this year, a rather huge increase from the 29% just two years ago.

Mobile traffic is projected to top 55% of all traffic to retail websites by the end of this year, according to IBM.

And along with traffic, mobile sales are up.

Mobile sales accounted for 24% of all online retail sales in March of this year, nearly double the 13% from two years ago....

About 70 percent consumers are expected to use their smartphones for shopping in the coming year, a new study has revealed.

The study conducted by research firm IDC found that 69 percent of respondents agree that the smartphone is a critical tool for shopping and is going to transform the shopping experience. It was also revealed that about seven in 10 respondents checked prices using their smartphones, and five in 10 said that they checked reviews from their smartphones.

The research found that one in five survey respondents bought from a competitor while they were shopping in a retail store this holiday season, while one in three purchased much more online versus in a retail store this year compared to last year. The research analysed the app and mobile Web activity of over 10,000 smartphone users during the holiday shopping season and Amazon came on top with more consumer accessing its app while brick-and-mortar retailers lagged behind....

FA primer on location-based marketing on mobile.Location-based marketing blurs the line between the digital and physical world. To drive foot traffic and sales at bricks-and-mortar stores, marketers target shoppers on their devices.

To do that though, marketers need to effectively identify and utilize consumers' locations. New services are giving people a much better incentive to share where they are, while new technologies are emerging to make location-based marketing a more exact science. In a new report from BI Intelligence, we look at the three of the primary types of location-based marketing approaches: geofencing, geoconquesting, and geoaudiencing, each of which uses location somewhat differently. We also look at some the latest and most effective location-based apps that are giving consumers' good reason to share their location....