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From the Editor-in-Chief – March 2015

IT’S CLEAR THAT mobile and cross-channel commerce are growing quickly. What’s not been so clear is where and how that growth is distributed across retailing. It’s too easy to assume that customers who have smartphones and tablets are now using their mobile devices to shop in the easiest and most convenient way with any retailer that takes their fancy, triggering a general and wholesale rise in m-commerce spending.

Our real-life experience gets in the way of that picture; as our deeper research shows in this IRUK 500, 2015 Performance Dimension Report on Mobile and Cross-channel, the measured truth is more complicated. When we launched this series of reports, in January 2015, we promised to hold the measure to a constantly changing industry, showing how accepted wisdom falls short of describing the full reality.

In this report we’ve unearthed a picture in which many UK retailers aren’t yet fully equipped for a world of mobile commerce. Not all apps work as they should, and many traders have yet to join up channels. But thanks to our research and Knowledge Partners, we have seen a great variety in the adoption and mastery of tools, tactics and approaches. It’s a picture that well illustrates that there’s plenty of opportunity for further growth.

Throughout the course of this study, we’ve endeavoured to shine new light in unexplored corners, and we’re confident that you will discover practical insights and new areas of interest. In their introduction, our editors, Jonathan Wright and Chloe Rigby, explain the shaping of this report and the way our research team has brought new ideas that we hope will help shape industry discussion.

Once again, we’ve relied on the insights of our valued Knowledge Partners to extend the scope of our research in this report: do get in touch if you have further data sets or studies that you feel could help further, and if you’d like to join the ranks of our partners. Our next milestone will be unveiling and discussing the IREU Footprint, our research into European retailers, exclusively at InternetRetailing Expo. We hope you can join us to be part of the conversation.

Ian Jindal

Editor-in-chief

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