Ah the heatwave. Everyone is happier, more relaxed and friendly, there is a proliferation of knees on display and slowly the pasty Brits are going slightly pink. But not everyone is happy. All these people outside, barbequing anything fleshy that sits still long enough are causing a drain away from e-commerce.
But this shift to being away from the computer to getting some fresh air is proving a boon to mobile, which has seen a great uplift in use as the sun has shone. The great sunburnt masses may not be indoors, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t want to shop.
What this keenly shows is that modern e-commerce is driven not so much by channel or device, but by where consumers are, what they are doing. It is a clear demonstration that context is really what drives commerce.
The drop off in e-commerce is not really a big issue – it is just the result of freaky weather. But the fact that it may well have driven more people to shop via their mobile will only increase the uptake of omni-channel shopping.
But there is also the fact that a younger generation of shoppers if creeping up on us who are more mobile centric that is going to start to reshape the e-commerce market. However, just thinking youngsters are ‘more mobile’ is a akin to thinking that all punks were the same. The younger future shopper is part of a complex web of tribes, each looking to use tech in different ways and with preferred ways of doing things.
Understanding this element of context – what tribe people belong to – along with the traditional aspects of context is going to be key to creating the optimal omni-channel strategy.
And this applies across the board and is going to be crucial to making everything from payments to marketing work. Time for a new idiom: context is king. Now where are my shades?
