Who Dares Wins

If you have being following me on Twitter you will have no doubt caught a glimpse of my disappointment with various mobile providers that provide a 3G service. The good news is that if you want to use the internet or any location based service with your mobile phone or notebook then you need 3G which offers a much higher bandwidth over traditional EDGE and GPRS networks. The bad news is that even when one is lucky enough to connect to 3G to access the internet one will find that it simply is not fast enough.

The early dot-com taught online stores to focus on two key points: minimum number of clicks to reach a sale and the speed at which a page refreshed. If these key points were not achieved customer would simple navigate to another supplier. Mobile shopping with 3G has very much the same traits. Being much slower than ADSL at home, or Wifi spots, consumers are quitting mobile and location based services simply because they don’t live up to those two principles.

Offline retailers need to attract customers into their stores by improving the in-store experience with an attractive environment and a compelling selection of products. One way to attract consumers into stores would be to offer free Wifi. Coffee shops such as the Coffee Company already do this. They are the leaders. But I actually mean the larger “follower” stores such as in Amsterdam: de Bijenkorf, V&D, HEMA, Albert Heijns, Gall & Gall, Selecyx, Bruna, C&A, NS etc.etc.. the list is endless.

Why would retailers offer this service? Well more and more people are starting to go mobile with their internet enabled phones. If stores want to get noticed then this is the way to go. You could invite your friends to in-store bargains that you have identified. Skype or Tweet each other and show what’s on sale with your video camera. Find out where your buddies are with IRLconnect. Receive offers from the store. Used guided store navigation. Combine your shopping lists with where to find in-store what’s on your list. Use competitive price and location comparison – people do it anyway outside of the store. Scan barcodes and pay with your mobile.

Clearly there are benefits and challenges for the stores. For example, through price comparisons stores maybe forced to bargain with consumers rather than sell at label price. If retailers want to stop diminishing sales in off line stores then they need to act. The first step for most of the major retailers would be to simply install the basic and low cost Wifi infrastructure as a prerequisite to offering other services.

Other challenges for the stores will come from reputation management. Are retailers really on top of their consumers? I doubt it. With today’s instant communications such as Twitters, tribes of people can quickly promote a store or bring it down into disrepute for a whole load of reasons and without any intervention from the stores. Is it fair? No, its business. Retailers need to proactively monitor consumer feelings and emotions – after all it is the consumers feelings that gives a store its brand and not the other way around. It is the consumers that identify with the retail brand and not the other way around. If the community or tribe is starting a campaign against a retailer it is important that the retailer understands why and can at least listen and change. With or without Wifi this is happening already. Wifi will be a catalyst for good or bad.

Various mobile providers, rather than retailers, offer costly Hotspots. These are aimed at a different market and are not attractive for in-store consumers. There is a confrontation here at (NS) Railway stations where typically HotSpots are offered for travelers and yet there is nothing for consumers of the NS or shops located on platforms. Why aren’t the NS and other platform retailers offering an attractive and compelling reason for people to travel and communicate? We don’t want to pay excessive HotSpot fees to mobile operators! We do want to know about NS and store offers.