Latest trend as seen anytime Kate Middleton puts on a new outfit! Gen Y females are going to their mobiles and buying immediately. Now if she wears something you sell, is your website mobilised? If not I can sort that out for you

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Gen Y Speeds Up Luxury Goods Spending

FEBRUARY 22, 2012

Flash sale sites and the fashion industry’s maturing web presence boost sales to young consumers

As Generation Y grows up and gains more buying power, the 18- to 34-year-old age group is increasingly purchasing luxury goods. According to a survey by American Express Business Insights, Gen Y consumers upped spending on premium, full-priced luxury goods by 31% in 2011 over the prior year. Generation X followed Gen Y in terms of spending growth—climbing 23% from 2010.

Joining the workforce and earning higher wages has surely contributed to Gen Y’s purchasing appetite. Yet it can also be assumed, based on the American Express data, that online discount luxury websites—or flash sales—stimulated young consumers’ desire for luxury fashion products. In other words, Gen Y’s early adoption of flash sale ecommerce shopping has paved the way for full-price luxury purchasing. In addition, according to the American Express study, seniors now exhibit a growing appetite for flash sale merchandise.

When shopping for luxury goods, young, digital-savvy consumers are frequently turning to ecommerce sites and other webpages for product research and purchases. A November 2011 study by customer experience management company Empathica indicates luxury goods shoppers visited company websites slightly more often than they did companies’ brick-and-mortar locations. Moreover, almost half of luxury buyers told Emphathica that they read online reviews and 14% visited social media websites prior to purchase.

The Empathica findings demonstrate that the web and ecommerce make up a significant portion of the luxury shopping experience. Partly because Gen Y consumers are demanding a digital presence among sellers, luxury retailers are steadily rising to provide one.

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Marketers and Advertisers Shift to Mobile-First Strategy - As I have been saying for many years, MOBILE FIRST - is your website adapted to be viewed on mobiles? If not click HERE

Report Says Mobile Marketing Adoption Leading to ‘Mobile First’ Mentality

Posted: 09 Jan 2012 09:40 AM PST

Mobile Marketing Report Says Mobile Marketing Adoption Leading to Mobile First Mentality According to a new report and series of projections published Monday from Telmetrics – a provider of advertising call measurement solutions – high mobile adoption rates among both consumers and advertisers are transforming the industry and driving a mobile-first mentality for measurable results.

“Mobile is the true pay per call platform as there is an immediacy about mobile local search that drives higher response rates and the dominant mobile ad response is a call,” says said Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics. With mobile, consumers are ready to make a purchase right away and advertisers are seeing the valuable link between a call and a purchase. The mobile marketing performance model is more easily defined and monetized, and that will help drive more revenue for advertisers and further tailor their mobile approach.”

Among the predictions for 2012 outlined in the report:

Pay Per Call Goes Mainstream With Mobile: High mobile adoption rates for both consumers and advertisers mean there is a mutual understanding of the platform and the relevancy of calls. Unlike the drawn out learning curve that came with online advertising, this new proficient mobile knowledge base will help drive pay per call programs.

Mobile Propels Pay Per Action: Advertisers today realize the wealth of data available via mobile and are eager to track and pay for revenue producing actions including calls, map/directions downloads, QR code reads – any definable and concrete action that means a purchase is likely imminent.

In-App Call Tracking Rises: We expect consumers will continue to hone their lists of favorite apps and use them as their go-to resources for everyday planning and purchasing more so than mobile browsers. As such, advertisers will increasingly track the impact of in-app activity on call volumes and sales. This includes social apps like Facebook and Yelp.

Marketers and Advertisers Shift to Mobile-First Strategy: The combination of continued low advertising budgets and the tracking capabilities of mobile will mean a market shift of companies implementing a digital strategy that starts with mobile and then extends to other platforms that can supply similar metrics.

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Mobile Users Expand Their Search Habits

AUGUST 1, 2011

More users searching more frequently, often for local content

More than 91 million US consumers will use the internet through a mobile device at least monthly by the end of this year, eMarketer estimates, and research shows that the increase in on-the-go web usage goes hand in hand with more search activity for local content.

According to research from comScore and the Local Search Association, 22% of all US mobile owners used search on their phone in January 2011, up from 16% a year earlier.

In addition to the rise in reach, there has also been a rise in frequency. By January 2011, there was a 10% year-over-year drop in the share of users searching just a few times per month. At the same time, almost-daily usage was up 20%. More than half of mobile search users now search on their device at least weekly.

Mobile users are also upping their use of local content, by 34% year over year. While browser usage still dominates in terms of local content access methods, mobile browser popularity dropped slightly between 2010 and 2011. Apps, meanwhile, grew to take a larger piece of the local mobile content pie.

As mobile users tap apps and browsers to search for local content, they are seeking out weather, news and maps first and foremost, but there has been major growth in usage of other local content, including classified ads (up 51%), online retail (up 50%) and restaurant info (up 40%).

The need for local businesses to reach mobile users when they are nearby is clear and growing. With 33% of all mobile users accessing local content, and 87% of that group GPS-capable, location-based targeting and local search opportunities can help marketers reach customers at a moment of need—and convenience.

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Mobile consumers ready to call

According to comScore more than 230 million American consumers, age 13+, are now mobile phone users with nearly 78 million accessing the mobile web from a smartphone device. For most mobile campaigns, brands may be too focused on web-type results, say some reports.

by Kristina Knight

Data from JumpTap finds that mobile consumers are more engaged mid-day than early in the morning. Engagement rates remained high through the later afternoon and evening. Why during the noon lunch period? Possibly because first thing in the morning most mobile users are commuting to work or readying their day at the office.

JumpTap's report found that more than 11 billion ad requests were make to the network by over 83 million unique consumers.

"Mobile, like PC web-based advertising, is very measureable. As such, many brands and app developers are measuring their ROI very closely and allowing consumers to respond to ads in varying ways including click to call , click to map, click to download or click to SMS," said Paran Johar, Chief Marketing Officer, Jumptap.

According to Millennial Media May SMART report the top post-campaign action was to place a call. The report found that 42% of mobile campaign actions resulted in a placed call. As for mobile marketers, most are concentrating on finding and engaging local consumers.

49% of brands target local audiences

38% target by demographic

20% target based on past behavior

Campaigns featuring store locators grew 48% month-over-month

Campaigns offering social media actions increased 36% month-over-month

Data from MediaMind shows only slightly different results than those from the JumpTap findings. According to their report mobile ads with the highest mobile click-thru rates (CTR) were between 7pm and 12am, with medical retail and entertainment verticals resulting in the highest overall CTRs. Mobile consumers using iPhone are most likely to interact with mobile ads. Their research also shows that mobile ads have higher CTRs than traditional browser-based banner ads.

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In its annual mobile technology report, Forrester Research has outlined the trends it expects to see in the coming year. Technologies like 4G and LTE, Near Field Communication (NFC), barcodes and augmented reality will see increasing amounts of hype in 2011, and the use of mobile/social/location combinations will soar, the report says. But for companies, the goal should now be on developing mobile business cases and strategies, and not jumping on the bandwagons surrounding these types of disruptions.

These technologies - LTE, NFC and mobile AR - will take years to emerge, says Forrester. Strategy needs to come before technology.

2010 Trends Continue

Forrester's 2011 report began by analyzing its performance on last's year's predictions. Overall, the firm gave itself a B+ on accuracy. It says that the trends we saw last year will continue in the year ahead. These included around 20 trends that were lumped into four general categories: disruptive forces, emerging trends, consumer use of mobile for commerce and company spending on mobile.

Last year, Forrester had claimed that we would see non-telco companies like Apple, Google and Facebook seeing increased importance as key players in the mobile ecosystem, we would see increasing device and OS (operating system) fragmentation, the increased integration of location and social into mobile services, increased consumer use of mobile commerce services and mobile product professionals would be increasing their mobile budgets.

While those still hold true, says Forrester, new trends for 2011 are emerging.

To summarize, the trends are as follows:

1) Mobile/Social/Local Combinations will Explode but will Generate Little Revenue

As we also recently noted, everyone is getting into mobile/social/local services these days from Facebook to Google and Amazon to Groupon. But Forrester says that while the number and usage of these services will increase, it does not expect the services to generate meaningful revenue in 2011. Also, in a side note, there's bad news for Foursquare buried in the report. Although Forrester doesn't name names, it says that "location-based social networks" will struggle as standalone activities as major players like Facebook integrate location into their services, like Facebook has done with Facebook Places.

2) 2011 is the Year of the "Dumb" Smartphone User

Smartphones will become more affordable, thanks to handset subsidies. And these new users will be less engaged and active than smartphone early adopters. Forrester expects they'll download fewer apps on average, but will consume more mobile media thanks to consumer education and convenience provided by the phones.

Despite the fact that these former "dumb phone" users may download fewer apps than early adopters, the overall app forecast is still good. In fact, Gartner also just released a report that stated mobile app store revenue will pass $15 billion in 2011. It said:

Worldwide mobile application store downloads are forecast to reach 17.7 billion downloads in 2011, a 117 percent increase from an estimated 8.2 billion downloads in 2010...By the end of 2014, Gartner forecast over 185 billion applications will have been downloaded from mobile app stores, since the launch of the first one in July 2008.

Worldwide mobile application store revenue is projected to surpass $15.1 billion in 2011, both from end users buying applications and applications themselves generating advertising revenue for their developers. This is a 190 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $5.2 billion.

(Note: The "dumb" reference in Forrester's trend title is not meant to a slight at the intelligence of these new users, by the way, but the phones they've upgraded from: feature phones, also sometimes called "dumb phones.")

3) The Mobile Fragmentation Problem will Continue

Forrester says it expects fragmentation to continue, but it's not just referring to the multiple variations of a single OS. It means that some customers have smartphones, some have feature phones, some use apps, some use SMS, plus there are multiple OS's in existence, in multiple versions, with multiple screen sizes and there are a higher number of devices out there. In short: fragmentation. The costs of porting, maintaining and promoting apps will remain high.

4) The "Apps vs. Internet" Debate Will Continue...to be Irrelevant

Says Forrester, it's not a question of "either/or" when it comes to a choice between apps vs. the mobile Web, but both. Frequent and intense users of services like banking and brokerage will want curated experiences in the form of apps, but the Internet will remain the fallback for more occasional information and needs. Mobile developers frustrated with the costs of building mobile apps for multiple platforms should rely more on the Web. Even if HTML5 doesn't scale within the next 2 to 3 years, mobile browsing experiences are improving, the report notes. But for targeting the "SuperConnecteds" and "Entertainers" (referring to two types of mobile users the firm classified previously, referring to, respectively, heavy users and those who listen to music, watch video and play games), apps are still needed.

5) Mobile Marketing Spend will Surpass $1 Billion

Marketer will begin allocating dedicated resources to mobile in 2011. In the U.S., Forrester forecasts that marketing spend on mobile display ads and search will surpass $1 billion in 2011. Marketers will find quantifiable ROI on mobile for generating real leads, driving foot traffic, and selling products and services.

6) Mobile Will Increasingly Prompt Users to Interact with Their Environment

In 2011, NFC will begin to matter. The market will move away from the trial stage in regions where there is NFC infrastructure in place, but barriers will still need to be removed for the technology to really take off. These include consumer demand, education and business model issues. Other technologies like QR codes (a type of barcode) and augmented reality will prompt users to hold up their phones to interact with the world around them. These initiatives, however, will remain nice, but will help raise awareness of the new forms of interaction provided by mobile.

7) The Attention to 4G will Vastly Outweigh the Impact of 4G Networks

More operators will launch 4G networks in 2011 to a lot of buzz, but Forrester says to ignore the hype. "4G will have as little impact as 3G had when it launched in Europe and the U.S. in 203." It took nearly 7 years for half of mobile subscribers in those regions to have 3G capable phones, says the firm. Expect similar trends for 4G.

8) Companies will Invest First in Convenient Services for Consumers

Forrester says that mobile product and service professionals, particularly in the travel industry, will invest first to keep their most lucrative customers happy. And in the hierarchy of benefits that mobile offers - revenue generation, cost savings and convenience - convenience will reign during 2011.

9) Casual Gaming Will Continue to Boom

Smartphones have become powerful gaming devices for the mass market, and this trend will continue in 2011. In the premium mobile space, new business models based on subscriptions, microtransactions and in-app billing will expand from the games category into others, like music and news.

10) "Mobile" Will Mean More than Mobile Phones

Consumer adoption of tablets, eReaders, portable media devices and other mobile products has grown in 2010 and this will continue in 2011. Apps and services will need to work across devices and consumers will want ubiquitous access to content and services. This will force service providers to sync content via the cloud to maintain a consistent experience across platforms.