M Commerce: Experiencing the Phygital Retail

Abstract

Emergence and evolution of information technologies paved way for the online transactions, termed as e-commerce. E-commerce was soon rechristened as wired e-commerce due to the rapid rise of mobile phone and other handheld devices facilitating access to internet while on the go and this led to the coining of the term m-commerce, the wireless avatar of e-commerce. Term Mobile commerce or simply m-commerce has been attributed to the collection of location based commercial services that are delivered by various internet enabled handheld devices such as mobile phones, tablets and palmtop devices. Though, essentially, both-e-commerce and m-commerce- are similar as the transactions are electronic in nature and are facilitated by internet but the element of mobility is one big differentiator between the two. Now, it has become difficult for the people to imagine e-commerce without the mobility dimension appended to it. In today’s online business environment, m-commerce is growing as next stage of e-commerce. Further, M-commerce has opened up new vistas for marketing the products, for targeting the customers at multiple points, for offering customized services using location based features and for enabling enhanced shopping and service experiences. It also offers opportunities for services that are more efficient and more user-friendly. The marketers may also offer new approaches, apps, and in-store solutions for enhanced customer engagement after researching the needs, roles and use contexts of the customers. Marketers have already started talking about mobile conversion funnel besides desktop conversion funnel. It is quite interesting to note that in mature markets, shape of the funnel is different and has higher purchase conversion rate.