Are Tablets Better Commerce Vehicles than Smart Phones?

Tablets are "better"than smart phones as a channel for commerce and shopping, in part because users are more likely to purchase after searching for a local business and tend to spend more per purchase than mobile phone users, a study sponsored by the Online Publishers Association has found. 


Some studies also show that tablet purchases are larger than those from PCs.   According to the 2012 Shop.org and Forrester Research "State of Retailing Online" survey, 49 percent of retailers say their average order value from tablets is now higher than traditional web sales. 


Nearly three in 10 (28%) retailers say they are seeing about the same average order value from tablets as their website. 

Consumers Will Store More Than 1/3 of Their Digital Content in the Cloud by 2016

The desire to share content and to access it on multiple devices will motivate consumers to start storing a third of their digital content in the cloud by 2016, according to Gartner. 


Gartner said that just seven percent of consumer content was stored in the cloud in 2011, but this will grow to 36 percent in 2016.


"Historically, consumers have generally stored content on their PCs, but as we enter the post-PC era, consumers are using multiple connected devices, the majority of which are equipped with cameras." said Shalini Verma, principal research analyst at Gartner. "With the emergence of the personal cloud, this fast-growing consumer digital content will quickly get disaggregated from connected devices."


Gartner predicts that worldwide consumer digital storage needs will grow from 329 exabytes in 2011 to 4.1 zettabytes in 2016. This includes digital content stored in PCs, smart phones, tablets, hard-disk drives (HDDs), network attached storage (NAS) and cloud repositories.


Average storage per household will grow from 464 gigabytes in 2011 to 3.3 terabytes in 2016. 

Do Millennials Really Complain More Often Than Others, Online?

Millennials leave the most critical review online, a study sponsored by Bazaarvoice has found, but by such a small margin a reasonable person might well conclude there is essentially no greater amount of "negative" reviews left by Millennials, than created by members of other generations. 


Overall, about 82 percent of online reviews are "positive."(click on the image for a larger view)

Baby Boomers are slightly more positive than the other generations, assigning three percent more five-star ratings to products than members of other generations tend to do. 


Millennials give one percent more one-star product ratings, the lowest rating possible;  the most of the three generations studies. 


Millennials are "decidedly middle-of-the-road," Bazaarvoice says, creating the highest percentage (seven percent) of three-star reviews, but the fewest one-star (very negative) and five-star (very positive) product ratings.


You might argue that Millennials are the most realistic reviewers, in fact. If life is a "Bell" curve, with the great mass of instances "in the middle," and only small percentages at the very high or very low ends of the scale, in terms of product quality, then the Millennial ratings make perfect sense. 

Verizon Wireless "Share Everything" Helps Marketers Using Text Messaging

Obviuously, as more subscribers shift to Verizon Wireless "Share Everything" plans, there will be implications for application providers and other third parties whose customers use the Verizon network.


The plan isn't  favorable to streaming video providers, is relatively neutral where it comes to most other application providers and actually could help marketers who use either text messaging or multimedia message service. 


Historically, text message marketers have had to worry about annoying prospects by essentially making users pay to receive messages. Under the new "Share Everything" plans, that won't be an issue.


The central annoyance still will be the sense of "invasion" on the part of users to unobtrusive messages in a channel that is considered highly personal and private. No change of plans is going to change that constraint.

Agent Network is Key to Peer-to-Peer Mobile Money Services

Managing the agent network is the most critical post-launch success factor for a telco-sponsored mobile money service, analysts at McKinsey and Company say. 


Agents conduct the cash-in and cash-out functions, enabling customers to convert cash into electronic money and back again in convenient locations; in the eyes of the customer, the agent is the face of the company.


Many providers focus on building their agent networks as fast as possible, but that is a mistake,  McKinsey says. Getting the agent network rollout right is one of the most complicated aspects of launching mobile money.


If a provider enlists too few agents, customers perceive the system as difficult to use, or even useless. On the other hand, if there are too many agents, many of them cannot generate enough business to cover the cost of managing liquidity.


As an example, one of the keys to Safaricom’s continued success has been its decision to match network growth to customer-base growth, ensuring a steady 1,000 transactions per agent per month.


The initial network will likely number in the hundreds, not thousands, and it does not have to cover the entire country. Safaricom launched M-Pesa with just 400 agents in a country of almost 37 million people. For larger countries, some experts urge a regional launch, accompanied by later rollouts.

Success Metrics for the Telco Mobile Money Business

Although there are relatively few success stories in mobile money to date, there is an emerging consensus among experts about some of the critical metrics for a successful business model, McKinsey and Company researchers say. 

Four of the key indicators are the percentage of active mobile-money users in the telco’s subscriber base (more relevant for a telco but could be adapted for use by banks in the future), the number of customers each mobile-money agent serves, the average number of transactions each agent conducts each day, and the average number of transactions each customer conducts per month. 

Indicator	Success is
% of active mobile-money users among total telco subscriber base	>10%
Number of customers per agent (across growth trajectory)	400–600
Average number of transactions per agent/day	30–50
Average number of transactions per customer/month	>2.5

Source: McKinsey and company

Facebook is Introducing Subscriptions and Ending "Credits"

Facebook is adding subscription capability for Facebook applications and ending its use of "Facebook Credits," its virtual currency.  Instead, Facebook will switch to payments denominated in local currencies. 


Some might argue the move is designed to make it easier for Facebook applications to integrate with other apps for purposes of shopping and commerce. "Real" currency is the coin of the realm for e-commerce, not virtual currencies, generally speaking.