Everyone is talking about the mobile Internet and how more and more consumers are browsing and using lots of apps anywhere they and their mobile phones happen to be. Are cell phone owners also becoming more comfortable buying things with their phones? If not, what would make them more likely to shop with their phones? This Retrevo Pulse Study looked at consumers and mobile commerce and found many willing shoppers ready to make purchases with their phones.

Consumers Are Warming to Mobile Commerce
In February of 2010, a Retrevo Pulse studyfound almost 10% of the respondents indicating they had purchased something with their cell phones. Four months later, with a different sample, that number had doubled to 20%. The bad news is that a little less than half the respondents have never purchased anything with their phone and have no plans to do so in the future. The better news is the 27% that haven’t bought anything yet but indicate they will in the future. That leaves about 20% who purchased something through their phone.

Apps Make Shopping Easier
Apps make everything so much easier and more fun, and that includes shopping. Retrevo found that nearly 42% of those who have shopped with their phones said they have used apps to make purchases. When we looked at gender and smartphone owners we weren’t surprised to see male mobile shoppers outnumbering females and iPhone owners leading the pack.

Credit Cards Might Be Getting in the Way
Note to retailers: if you want more sales from mobile customers, make it easy for them to store their credit card info and while you’re at it, keep your eye on retailers like Amazon with innovations like PayPhrase or Mobile Payments Service that might take some of the friction out of online or mobile transactions.

Visa vs. Verizon
If retailers can’t get the credit card out of the way, how about the carriers? Will we see AT&T or Verizon get into the mobile payment business? The idea seems to be popular in Japan where the dominant carrier, NTT DoCoMo offers a mobile wallet with their handsets. And what about Apple or Google; they’re building huge collections of credit cards. Will we see an Apple Bank spin out of the iTunes Store?

Conclusion
Mobile commerce is here and gaining ground fast as mobile devices and apps make it easier for consumers to press the “buy” button. Despite its growing popularity, we have to wonder if consumers might be apprehensive about transferring credit card info using their phones. If retailers want more business from smartphone toting shoppers they’ll need to improve the process.

About Retrevo Pulse Report
The Retrevo Pulse Report is an ongoing study of people and electronics from the consumer electronics shopping and review site Retrevo.com. The data for this report came from a study of online individuals (non-Retrevo users) conducted by an independent panel. The sample size was over 1,000 distributed across gender, age, income and location in the United States. Most responses have a confidence interval of 4% at a 95% confidence level.

Shopping On-The-Go?
Coincidentally, Retrevo Has a Mobile Shopping Service called RetrevoQ, Anyone can send a tweet or SMS text message to Retrevo’s mobile shopping service and get back a message telling them whether or not it is a good deal and what would be a fair price to pay.

Iconoculture

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Iconoculture provides companies a window into consumer culture with perspectives on why consumers behave the way they do and what impact those behaviors will have on businesses.

Iconoculture’s Top Trends for 2009 cover multiple categories and demographics and offer immediate and far-reaching implications for brands, businesses and agencies of all kinds. Through a combination of research and expert analysis, Iconoculture helps organizations understand what trends are on the horizon, where these trends are heading and how to use the insights to stay ahead of consumer demand and expectations.

“As consumer behaviors shift, businesses are looking to make sense of how to reach this newly frugal, global and environmentally conscious consumer into 2009 and beyond,” said Dan Frawley, CEO of Iconoculture. “At Iconoculture, we help our clients understand the cultural nuances at play with insights they can build into their overall product and marketing strategies.”

The Top Trends for 2009 identified by Iconoculture as critical influences in consumer behavior include

Trend 1: Buying Out
Motivated by a trifecta of dire economic pressures, changing sustainability beliefs and a growing indie aesthetic, leading-edge consumers are redefining what it means to consume, from upcycling to victory gardening to the radical rethinking of household finances.

Trend 2: Forced Full Disclosure
The Internet and other technologies have ushered in an unprecedented era of personal honesty, whether consumers like it or not. Location-based services, social networks and online banking portfolios will, in the coming year, change the nature of privacy, with implications stretching from technology, personal finance and politics to work and play.

Trend 3: Morphing Multicultural Mobility
In the not-too-distant future, “minorities” will be the U.S. majority. Knowing how to reach these consumers is only becoming more difficult. La crisis, as Latinos refer to the economic crisis, is already forcing African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos to migrate to new geographic areas in search of economic opportunity and to become involved in hot-button political and cultural issues they previously left unexplored.

Trend 4: Shame Shift
We’re seeing social mores morph, and watching as the shift in attitude around what’s socially acceptable and what isn’t reshapes a broad swath of businesses. Generational divides, changing economic circumstances, environmental awareness and an expanded slate of public and personal data is causing consumer attitudes about acceptability to morph. From dumpster diving to mixed martial arts to teen pregnancy and extreme media violence, the future ain’t what it used to be.

Trend 5: Community Living
The shape of the nation is changing as cultural rural, urban and suburban commingle and consumers seek out new kinds of community — ones that transcend geography. Phenomena like localism in food (and other goods) in urban settings and the flattening effects of technology in rural and suburban areas are resetting the nation’s working/playing field. Consumers are craving less commuting pain and are looking for innovative ways to make more touchable moments with other people.

Trend 6: Health Holism
Health has stepped out of the hospital — way out. Consumer engagement with health and wellness information and care no longer requires extensive outlays of money, time or sacrifice. From expanding wellness initiatives in the workplace to info-sharing among consumers, Americans are increasingly finding that the tools for living better and knowing more are seamlessly integrated into daily life.

About Iconoculture
Iconoculture, a cultural trend research company, is the voice of cultural trends, illuminating not only what’s important to consumers worldwide, but also why it’s happening and where it’s heading. In order for companies to seize opportunities for developing products, services and messages, they need the inside story that’s driving consumer behaviors and cultural trends. Iconoculture’s perspective provides more actionable ideas to Fortune 1000 corporations and agencies, enabling companies to become warriors for their brands. In 2007, Inc. magazine ranked Iconoculture as one of the top fastest-growing private companies in the nation. For more information, contact Iconoculture at 1-866-377-0087 or visit us at http://www.iconoculture.com/.

Key findings include:

• Nearly three out of five Americans say rising food and energy costs worry them the most.
• Close to sixty percent of those surveyed say they are having problems paying their bills.
• Almost 25% of those surveyed say their rent and mortgage payemnts are either late or in danger of falling behind.
• As a result of the financial stress, 71.3% say they have cut back on their spending and just over 40% are staying home for the holidays.

Not spreading the good cheer
While times are tough all over, more than two out of three Americans have no interest in seeing the government bail out the auto industry.  This reluctance extends to retired workers as well, with 58.5% of those surveyed saying “no” to bail out collars going to cover retiree health benefits.

You can learn morea bout what’s on America’s mind by reviewing the findings of the survey online.

Technology enables marketers and business managers to see their enterprise and the markets in which they operate on a grand scale.  Trends are easier to spot and business models can be altered accordingly.  But to really understand the “why” behind those trends, you have to get to know the customers who make up the markets.

According to Chedore:

“The key is marrying database analytics and a deep dive [into the targeted consumer]. [Most research] lies somewhere in the middle between these two. We’re rigorous, but stodgy. The industry hasn’t yet really embraced the opportunities to leverage new technology to interact with respondents. We’re online, yes–but we’re using online mainly as a data collection methodology [rather than as a fundamental game-changer.] “

Another important, yet under-used, benefit of market research can be found by turning the analytical eye inward to identify exploitable opportunities that may already exist inside the business.  External market research companies are certainly capable of doing this kind of work for their clients but are rarely invited to do so.  According the the report in Marketing Daily:

Chedore believes that the researcher’s role should lie as much in helping companies to harness their own internal data as in conducting research, although he adds that some in the business do not agree that such activities should fall within the domain of market research. Significant opportunities exist in “taking the available data sources within companies, making them compatible, and then interrogating them to answer questions,” he says.

However, he also acknowledges that today’s typical market research firm/client dynamics tend to stand in the way of such an expanded business relationship. “All market research service companies ask clients to treat them more like partners so that they can serve clients better, and I subscribe to that, as well,” he says. “But I also view it as being supremely the fault of market researchers.

The take-aways
So, what to make of all this talk about research – often an area most small and mid-sized agencies (and their clients) try to avoid?  Here are some simple recommendations:

1. Collect or conduct research that takes a look at the broader market to understand where things are going and to identify key market issues you’re facing in 2009.

2. Spend time to meet with and understand the attitudes and outlook of customers who represent the frequent users of your product or service.  Social media is one way to do this.  So are face-to-face meetings and shopping experiences/interviews on location.

3. Work with an objective advisor who can help you remove your natural biases from the results.  The clearer the view, the more helpful in the long run.

4. Consider taking the same clear-eyed approach to your existing customer/client base.  Get to know the story behind the trends and understand why things are working the way they are today in order to make the subtle course corrections that could yield significant dividends in a tough economic year.