The continuing importance of location to mobile commerce and marketing

Geotargeting

Geotargeting

According to the latest Mind Commerce Publishing report, entitled “Mobile Location Commerce 2012-2017”, mobile commerce is predicted to achieve a 39 percent compound growth rate from now through until the completion of 2017, as a result of the omnipresence of smartphones and tablet computers.

Location-based commerce is forecasted to be one of the primary initiatives that will exist among the mobile environment within the next three years. In fact, location-based services were a key element of the report, and are expected to have an important impact on boosting sales.

Geolocation and geotargeting are far from new concepts, but the ability to use it with extreme accuracy and efficacy on a mainstream basis was not available until mobile devices could be used for the personalized delivery of offers and messages to the consumer.

Though the original form of this strategy was used by companies such as Foursquare, where a user would manually share their location so that recommendations could be based on that information, mobile device apps can now disclose a location automatically so that programs like Foursquare are able to make the recommendations without the requirement of the additional manual step.

That said, LBS are still just getting started as the technology works its way through the population. This is especially true with personalized offers. Equally, though, Foursquare is only one fish in a large school that are all providing service based on geotargeting concepts. Startups such as Highlight and Sonar, as well as Google have all been dabbling in personalized location-based offers through mobile.

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