Mobile commerce was born in 1997 when the first two mobile phone enabled Coca Cola vending machines were installed in the Helsinki area in Finland. They used SMS text messages to send the payment to the vending machines.

Mobile Commerce has been defined as follows (Wikipedia):

"Mobile Commerce is any transaction, involving the transfer of ownership or rights to use goods and services, which is initiated and/or completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the help of an electronic device."

At KODIME we use the term mCommerce to describe any mobile scenario that involves transactions and sales of good or services that do deliver products not to the phone placing the order, but through some other means, directly or indirectly.

So the sale of ringtones or image downloads is under Mobile Content, (typically using our STARtxt solution) whereas the sale of pizzas, tickets or CDs is mCommerce.

Benefits

mCommerce is the ultimate goal for many active mobile marketers. If you are already communicating interactively via the mobile channel, why not also enable the instant ordering of products, directly from the same handset?

Limitations

The limitations for mCommerce compared with traditional ecommerce are signficant, though by far outweighed by its benefits. The small screen size of today's mobile handsets mean less space for product presentation and a limit to the total number of SKUs that can be displayed at any time. Zooming into product images or user-friendly multiple dropdown boxes to select sizes and colours are not easily transferable to mobile, if at all. The checkout process involving any forms needs to be shorted, with less fields to complete, and less pages to view. Sending a product as a gift to a new address is not something many mobile users will contemplate on a Nokia or even iPhone.

The CRM factor

As with non-transactional Mobile Marketing, mCommerce deliver the best return when it is tightly integrated with CRM. The unique features of the channel, especially reliably identifying an individual customer via his/her mobile number, mean that the shopping experience and order placing can be even simpler than on the web desktop equivalent.

Features

Working with a KODIME solution to enable your mCommerce means:

• full integration with Mobile Marketing and messaging
• 100% web based access to manage the Mobile Storefront
• Dynamic optimisation of images and other content for >3.000 different handsets
• Payment support for Credit Cards, premium SMS and PayPal Mobile