Brand Central Station

By: Andrew Eisner, Retrevo.com’s Director of Community and Content

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.

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Intersting news breaking this week about the use of mobile phones in the US.  Apparently, like much of the rest of the world, a majority of Americans now carry their cell phones with them “at all times” – even inside their homes.  This coming from a study released this week by Knowledge Networks.

In other parts of the world, where the hard wiring required for phones for the past 100 years ran up against ancient buildings, incredibly dense populations or remote locations, mobile phones were often adopted as the appliance of choice for people who wanted to stay in touch.  The distribution of phones in countries like Japan and Germany lead phone companies in those countries to adopt a later, more versatile standard for mobile communications – resulting in an explosion of SMS and other mobile communications streams.

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As reported via Adotas:

Jim Rome, the popular sports-talk radio host, has signed on with HipCricket to create a closer relationship with his listeners (also known as “Clones”).  Rome’s clones can now participate in a daily “Huge Text of the Day” (as long as it doesn’t suck), additional contests and program changes.

The alliance seems to reflect the fact that sports fans are coming to rely on mobile media devices more and more.  ESPN and a host of other sports services have inked deals with cellular phone carriers to provide updates and other streaming content.  The deal between HipCricket and Rome is viewed as a “logical extension” of Rome’s show and is accessible by any phone with text messaging capabilities.

MarketingVOX provides this snippet about a promotion conducted at the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.  The event drew 2,500 people, a third of whom participated in the “Digital Post Office of Love” event.

“We wanted to create a fun and engag­ing activity and to build up the text mes­saging list,” president David Wachs of Cellit told DM News. “Those who opted in for the game received follow-up messages asking them if they would like to opt in to receive alerts for upcoming museum events.”

From the DM News article:

Each text message appeared instantly on a large interactive display for all par­ticipants to view and the intended recipi­ent received a notice on their cell phone. Six hundred people played the game and more than 800 text messages were sent.

This is just one of an ongoing series of events that MCA does with the mobile phone. The museum, which targets peo­ple in their mid-20s to mid-30s, also uses mobile to promote prize giveaways and for event reminders.

The “Digital Post Office of Love” event was marketed through the mobile phone, as well as through e-mail and ads in Time Out Chicago.

Sounds like fun.