Holiday Retailing Frenzy: How IBM Spots the Trends
by Steve Hamm for A Smarter Planet
When it comes to mobile shopping this holiday season, there will be no place for the makers of smartphones and tablet computers to hide. Analysts will be able to detect not just the brand of the device from which a consumer forays to retailing Web sites; they’ll know what model each shopper is using.
This bit of intelligence comes from John Squire, chief strategy officer–smarter commerce, for IBM. Squire is the maestro behind the annual IBM Coremetrics Benchmark campaign–which monitors shopping activities on more than 500 US retailing Web sites and lesser numbers of sites in other countries. Each year, Squire and his team issue a series of updates during the crucial Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping days. And, this year, the data will be made public in rapid-fire mode. If you have a large appetite for online retailing data, check in frequently at #holidayretail on Twitter.
Mobile shopping is expected to be hot this season. Squire expects about 12% to 15% of transactions on retailing sites to come from mobile devices, up from 4.5% during last year’s holiday shopping season. “We can detect exactly what device they’re using–the exact device,” he says. “That information can help retailers decide how to invest in enhancing the mobile shopping experience.”…
