The trend will result in mobile and nomadic devices
accounting for 30 percent of eRetail within five years.
Such transactions would continue to comprise a small
minority of a global retail sales marketplace currently worth more than $16
trillion.
Report author Windsor Holden said mobile is increasingly
being deployed at all touchpoints in the retail process – product discovery,
product purchase, customer retention.
There is a growing importance of the mobile device as a
hub, marrying remote and physical purchases. It cited the example of the eBay
Fashion App and Image Swatch, where consumers take or upload a photograph of an
item to search for a product online.
eBay is planning to enhance this application by enabling
users to compare prices and item availability both online and via partner
bricks-and-mortar stores: the end user can then pay for the item via PayPal
before picking up the product from the local store.