I have to agree, and hope that large companies such as Coca-Cola can fund and promote the evolution.
It’s a tough time for the retail high street, with redundancies being made by household names such as Jessops, HMV and Blockbuster. I’m sensitive to the plight of those people who now find themselves out of work, but I have no sympathy for the corporations that led their employees down the path towards administration.
I regularly stress to my employers the need to stay fresh and relevant, and to keep up with the times; seeing the long road ahead rather than thinking too much in the present. It was no secret that Apple and other significant technology companies started changing the landscape at the beginning of the last decade, making music more easily available on personal, mobile devices. It seemed obvious, and any clear-thinking business should have started making long-term plans for how to engage with these consumers and stay relevant. You can say the same for cameras and film rentals.
And now we have payment mechanisms, the success of which will again be dictated by the all-powerful consumer.
I’m all for it, having used PassBook on my iPhone for a few months, albeit irregularly due to the small number of companies that are actively engaging with the platform. I’ve used it for flights (Lufthansa), buying coffee (Starbucks) and booking hotels (Hotels.com).
In its recent press release, Coca-Cola reveals that ‘mobile payments hit $172bn in 2012 globally, a 62% increase over the prior year’.
“Everyone is waiting for the inflection point,” said Doug Busk, director of mobile technologies and strategies for Coca-Cola. “It feels like it did in 1998, when people were easing their way into using a credit card to shop online. Now, airline passengers are pulling up itineraries and boarding passes on their smartphones, people are browsing and buying on their tablets, and mobile banking and cloud-based payment solutions are gaining popularity.”
Coke says point-of-sale is next, which is good news for merchants, consumers and, according to Busk, Coca-Cola itself.
So, as if to prove a point, Coca-Cola is piloting vending machines that enable consumers to buy drinks and collect ‘My Coke Rewards’ loyalty points with a simple tap of their phone. The pilot programme is being tested in Texas, with 200 machines outfitted with small screens and contact-less readers that accept Isis mobile payments. The company says it plans to roll out tens of thousands of the units across the US later this year.
“We’re going beyond payment into loyalty,” said Busk. “This technology removes the friction of having to open a bottle of Coke, look under the cap to find a code, sign up for My Coke Rewards and log points online. And any time you remove friction, you see increases in frequency.”
And this is how you engage with the next generation of customer, which is all-important if you want to stay relevant in a fast-moving industry such as ours.
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