Social Shopping

These numbers and more are from this infographic that Foursquare released on its blog, along with ideas on how to find specials through the Foursquare app.

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Unlike the primitive nature associated with Black Friday– stampedes, trampling, and general chaos– modern technological advances such as QR codes, apps, and tablets have given retailers the opportunity to accommodate shoppers from multiple mediums to leave Black Friday without a black eye. A survey conducted by the National Retail Federation revealed that social media and modern technology will play an especially significant role in holiday shopping this year, which gives shoppers the upper hand in finding the best deal available while also avoiding as much of the chaos as possible.

Half of smartphone owners surveyed reported intentions to use their devices for upcoming holiday purchases, whether in the form of accessing the Internet through the device or utilizing newly released apps to shop around for the best deal and navigate the store with interactive maps. Aside from making purchases directly from the mobile device, shoppers will be able to shop in a more effective manner by knowing which store to visit for the products they need.

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If you listen to today’s social media pundits, it would be easy to believe that email marketing is neither effective nor relevant in today’s digital environment. The logic goes that email has lost its luster to ‘sexier’ marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare, especially when the target audience is tech-savvy college students. Contrary to popular belief, email is the best engager of college kids as Boris Revskin, CEO of CampusLive, explains after the jump.

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The Google Mobile Ads Blog provides six mobile advertising trends and recommendations to retailers in their latest blog entry.
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8coupons is a free iPhone app that provides a variety of ways to look for coupon deals and specials in an area. The “Nearby” option (bottom left of screen) identifies locations of businesses and deals associated with them. Tapping the numbered balloons brings up detailed information about each offering. If you prefer a simple list, tapping the List button in the Nearby view switches from the Map view to a List view.

There’s also an Augmented Reality (AR) type view of deals. Tap the “iDeals” button (lower right of screen) and bring the iPhone up into a camera viewing mode to get an idea of the direction various deals can be found.

If you find deals not listed, the “Add Deals” button lets you contribute to the information collection. It gives you an option of adding a photo before asking you to complete a form to describe the deal being reported.

Some deals required printing and filling out a paper form. 8coupons did not appear to have any way to either print the form directly or to forward the form via email for printing from a desktop or notebook computer. Putting this one issue aside, the app is fast, easy to use and simple to understand. Its ability to provide information in a number of visual modes is gives the user a way to decide which mode is easiest for him or her to use.

You can find this free app in the iTunes App Store at:

8coupons

The Google Mobile Ads Blog provides interesting mobile statistics on their way to listing:

Five mobile trends to watch and how you can get started today

- 85% of mobile devices will be web enabled by 2012
- Mobile search grew by 400% in the past year
- 33% of search have local intent
- 59% of people visit a local store after searching for it on a mobile device

Here are the five pieces of advice Google offers to businesses

1. Create a mobile specific site
2. Make it easy for people to take action after discovering your business on a mobile device
3. Use mobile devices’ unique qualities
4. Track mobile and desktop separately and iterate
5. Integrate your media campaign efforts

Video courtesy of GoogleMobileAds85% of mobile devices will be web enabled by next year

The 1.5 update for Google Shopper for iPhone brings hyperlocal to searches for deals.

Find nearby deals with Google Shopper 1.5 for iPhone

The app now shows deals for offers nearby as well as a map for the offers’ locations. These offers are based on deals from businesses who have listed themselves in Google Places.

Cities where Google Offers (think GroupOn) is available show up in the tab labeled “My Offers.” Note that Google Offers is only available in select cities (New York, Portland, Oakland and San Francisco). It will be available soon in Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle and Washington D.C.

Google Shopper is a free app. It can recognize cover art and barcodes and get input by typing or speaking.

Google Shopper (iTunes App Store)

ThisIsMyNext noted ISIS’ press release announcing:

MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover join ISIS mobile payment network

The PayWithISIS press release indicates this may be the long awaited emergence of NFC (Near Field Communication) technology as a means of making mobile ecommerce transactions.

Isis will bring mobile commerce to consumers and merchants by using mobile phones to make point-of-sale purchases through the use of near-field communication (NFC) technology. Isis will offer customers a secure and convenient way to pay, redeem coupons and store merchant loyalty cards, all with the tap of a phone.

However, given the pace at which NFC appears to be proceeding, it may be years before we see the combination of phones with the NFC hardware embedded and merchants who have the hardware, network infrastructure and payment agreements in place to actually make transactions.

However, it is a milestone to see the major credit card players aligning with AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. Only Sprint, of the big four U.S. mobile carriers, is not participaing in this effort.

While some of wait to see if NFC (Near Field Communications) takes off as the mobile payment system technology of choice (it doesn’t look to be it so far), Sprint partnered with American Express and its Serve mobile digital payment system available to its customers.

American Express and Sprint Collaborate to Promote Serve

However, access to this service is limited to “select” Sprint Android powered smartphones. So, it is not a universal mobile payment solution for Sprint customers. Serve also currently supports iOS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) and support is planned for Microsoft Windows Phone and RIM BlackBerry.

ReadWriteWeb notes that an American Express card is not required to use Serve. Transactions can be funded using a bank account, debit or credit card, or from another Serve account.

You can learn more about American Express’ Serve at:

serve.com

Via ReadWriteWeb: American Express’ Digital Payments Platform Serve Teams with Sprint

This year (2011) was suppposed to be the year NFC (Near Field Communications) was rolled out in smartphones and retailers. And yet, here we are half-way through 2011 with nothing more than relatively small test rollouts and NFC embedded in Google Places signs. The NFC movement fragmented in the first half of 2011.

Engadget reported that MasterCard and CSI Enterprises are planning some non-NFC mobile payment apps.

CSI Virtual MasterCard app bringing mobile payments to iOS, Android and BlackBerry

CSI Virtual MasterCard’s website says:

Summer 2011 – CSI MasterCard innovative mobile device-smartphone application release for virtual MasterCard access on the go.

Engadget says that this “summer” rollout starts next month (July).