Shop Till We Drop: Will Mobile Search & Location Services Mega-Trends Make 2008 The Year Of The Mall?
It’s that time again when those who are so inclined peer into their crystal balls and predict the key events and trends of the year ahead. Here are the predictions of Los Altos, CA, based NearbyNow, a mobile and online service that allows consumers to search for products, brands, and sales at local shopping centers. Funnily enough, they all seem to indicate a good year for local search and shopping.
The top five trends to watch:
Local search to boom – companies such as Circuit City and Walmart putting their inventories online, combined with smart search services such as NearbyNow’s, will see more consumers turning to the Internet and their mobiles to find goods and services rather than the Yellow Pages. Up till now not being able to search for specific items has stopped consumers from using local search services but the above changes will mean that 2008 will be the year local search takes off.
Mobiles to become integral to shopping – consumers will find having information sent to their mobile phones increasingly useful as they search online to find items to buy but have directions to the store sent to their cells. This is the beginning of bigger trend where mobiles become a part of the shopping process.
Advertising to go multichannel – by the end of 2008, a majority of campaigns will include Internet or mobile as part of the advertising mix. And text messages to mobiles will become the standard protocol for measuring print, outdoor, and radio advertising effectiveness.
1:1 marketing = keyword+place+now – the ability of mobile technologies to combine keyword searches with location awareness and spontaneity will prove to be a very powerful personalized marketing tool. The words “near you” will find themselves increasingly adopted in the marketing vocabulary in 2008, and the price of advertising will increase as conversion rates rise.
2008 will be the year of store pickups – more online selling sites will feature buy online, pick it up at the store options as consumers want to get goods sooner and save on shipping. Get it now will be 2008’s killer application and could propel local search and shopping “into a whole new stratosphere,” says NearbyNow.
December 10th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptShop Till We Drop: Will Mobile Search & Location Services Mega-Trends Make 2008 The Year Of The Mall? Author: Peter Purton It’s that time again when those who are so inclined peer into their crystal balls and predict the key events and trends of the year ahead. Here are the predictions of Los Altos, CA, based NearbyNow, a mobile and online service that allows consumers to search for products, brands, and sales at local shopping centers. Funnily enough, they all seem to indicate a good year for [...]