Diversification in E-Commerce: M-Commerce

Ms. Neha Choithramani, Assistant Professor, Department of Commerce and Management

Keywords: B2B, B2C, M-Commerce, Web hosting, E-Commerce

The more recent platform for various enterprises selling goods and services utilizing wireless handheld devices like smartphones and tablets is known as mobile commerce or M-commerce. It is a new form of E-commerce enabling users to access shopping platforms without using physical computers or laptops.

With the due amount of time, wireless handheld devices are being used for content delivery which is fast-paced, reliably secure, and adaptable. Result of it, M-Commerce tech is budding at a rapid rate.

A few cases in point include in-app shopping, virtual marketplace apps such as Finserv Markets, Amazon, and Flipkart, etc. mobile apps, mobile banking, and digital wallets such as Google Pay, Samsung Wallet, and PhonePe to name a few.

M-Commerce is used in specific industries including follows:

Telecommunications: Service adjustments, bill payments, and account reviews are all done using handheld devices.

Financial Services: Brokerage transactions, Mobile banking, Online Market trading, and Online Investments are mostly done using hand-held devices these days.

Services and Retail Marketing: Placing and paying online orders from different consumers in different countries through various online retail shops and apps.

Informative services: News updates relating to weather, traffic updates, sports, financial and business, entertainment, etc. are accessed through mobile devices.

Types of M-Commerce:

This new platform can be differentiated by following three functions:

• Mobile Shopping
• Mobile Banking
• Mobile Payments

Mobile Shopping: With the growth in online businesses, start-ups, telecommunications, and IT infrastructure, consumer markets are also updating their technologies using various web-based apps like Amazon, Flipkart, Paytm, etc. enabling consumers to buy varieties of products using a mobile phone. App Commerce is a subcategory, which is the transactions taking over the native apps using mobile wallets like Amazon Pay.

Mobile Banking: An online banking method in a style designed for mobile technologies enabling consumers to access and conduct financial transactions, pay various bills, access brokerage services, and trade stocks online. These functions are performed by a secure dedicated app being provided by major banking institutions. Mobile banking services may include SMS or chatbots or other conversational app platforms like WhatsApp to send alerts, track account activities, and send One Time Passwords (OTP) for secured transactions. An example could be WhatsApp (Meta) Pay which helps customers to get their account information like account balance, funds transference, etc. through a dedicated chatbot that provides information in real-time.

Mobile Payments: Most widely used and having enormous growth, this payment method is an excellent alternative to traditional payment methods due to its ease of usage. It enables customers to buy products and services using a handheld mobile device. Used in business-to-business, business consumers, consumer to business and consumer-to-consumer models for easy yet convenient and reliable payment transactions. Digital wallets, such as PayTM, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, etc. let consumers pay for their products or services without even paying cash or swiping a card. They include in-built bit-wise encrypted secure transactions (SSL) which help the transactions to be safe. Hand-held consumers also use QR (Quick Response) codes for making various transactions. Also, adding to this, consumers can send the money directly by using just the recipient’s phone number or bank account.

How does M-Commerce work?

Mostly mobile or hand-held devices are enabled with M-Commerce enabled Apps that are connected via a wireless telecommunication network through either an internet-enabled sim card or Wi-Fi for conducting transactions of online purchasing etc.

For the development of an M-Commerce application, some important key performance indicators monitoring are included as follows:

• Total mobile traffic for the app;
• Total application traffic received;
• Average order value of the product; and
• Value of orders through the period

Correspondingly, Add to Cart and Favorites sections in apps will let developers understand the consumers turn up to be customers. It also helps in tracking the rate of consumer durables. M-Commerce App Developers might also have a keen interest in cart conversion rates, Web-page or SMS subscriptions, average page loading times, etc.

The mobile payment system is operated through P2P (Peer-to-Peer) sharing wherein once the mobile device is paired with the consumer’s bank information the mobile, with just a wave can pay for the product at the payment terminal. Similarly, Contactless payments use smartwatches, and smartphones use near-field communication technology.

References:

1. https://www.techtarget.com/searchmobilecomputing/definition/m-commerce
2. “Mobile Commerce in the United States – Statistics & Facts. https://www.statista.com/topics/1185/mobile-commerce/#topicHeader__wrapper”
3. Pew Research Center. “Mobile Fact Sheet. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/fact-sheet/mobile/”
4. “B2C Ecommerce Benchmark 2019, “https://www.optimizely.com/globalassets/03.-global-documents/reports/b2c_benchmarkreport_2019.pdf/ Pages 4-7.