A recent research conducted by Juniper Research has found the mobile marketing and retail sector including mobile advertising, smart posters and coupons, will exceed $8 billion globally by 2012.
The "Mobile Marketing and Retail Strategies" report found that retailers have started exploiting mobile channel through advertising campaign on the handset and also by issuing free coupons. The market for mobile advertisements and free coupons alone is forecast to grow by half within the next two years.
"Our research and interviews showed that location aware technologies will play a key part," Howard Wilcox, co-author, Mobile Marketing and Retail Strategies, said. "Companies like Google and IBM (News - Alert) are seeking to exploit the knowledge of where users are located to enable retailers to offer in store shoppers a rich set of capabilities such as personalized special offers. As a result we're forecasting the mobile coupons market to double to exceed $4 billion in 2012. "
Juniper officials noted that at the CTIA (News - Alert) Wireless 2010, nearly 20 percent of the participants were said to come from the retail sector, showing that retailers were starting to latch on to the potential of the entire mobile channels.
The report warns, the failure to use targeted advertising like short messaging system or "SMS" advertising may cause mobile users to regard such advertising as such little better than spam. The reports recommend that brands and resellers should consider location tagging on their products and areas.
Juniper believes that smart posters will remain a potential sector within the overall market until Near Field Communications or "NFC" capable devices are more popularly used.
The report forecasts that Western Europe market will nearly treble in size between 2010 and 2014. It also suggests that brands, retailers and merchants should use technical applications which can be more suited.
The Juniper Research (News - Alert) also assesses the current and future status of mobile retail, based on interviews, analysis and case study from representatives of the leading organizations in this industry.
Rajani Baburajan is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Rajani's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by Erin Harrison