Mobile Apps – Providing Services to On-the-Go Customers

The ubiquity of smartphones, which are packed with all kinds of innovative apps, is leading to social change in the behavior of the consumers. For accessing information and executing all kinds of tasks the consumers are increasingly depending on the app Eco system.

A research conducted by ComScore, shows clearly that the consumers are now spending more than half of their online time on their mobile devices. The idea of browsing for information and services while on the go has now become a dominant trend. To take advantage of the trend, the marketers are now using location-based advertising strategies for engaging with customers.

The exact location of a potential customer, as reflected in the smartphone map, is of greatest importance to the location-based marketers. But the issue is that about 60% of the marketers (as per the data from Schneider) are unable to get the accurate information on the customer’s location. Unless the marketers have the accurate location related information, they can’t attach the individual to real places and they are not in a position to define his entire persona.

It is only by looking at the locations that a particular person visits over a period of time that the data can be developed to decide if someone is a coffee lover, or prefers to eat a particular kind of food, or has the tendency to buy from shops related particular brands. Such data is critical for enabling the marketer to push the information that will be of interest to the customer.

These days many customers turn off the location feature on their apps, this makes it impossible for the marketer to track his movements. Now they are not in a position to develop a strategy for making the customer come back to a certain shop or establishment.

To ensure that the customer does not switch off the location feature in the app, many apps are now refraining from asking the location permission at the time of the download. They prefer to wait till the customer clicks the feature that will require the location permission. By this strategy they are more likely to convince the customer that it is in his interest to provide the location permission.