The New Mobile Commerce Revolution

During the earlier parts of the internet and technological revolution that began in the 1990's with the emergence of the World Wide Web was what eventually came to be known as E-Commerce. Indeed, there was the shift whereby what was done in brick and mortar stores was increasingly done online. Thus, regular commerce became electronic commerce, or e-commerce for short. Nowadays, there has been yet another shift to a subset of electronic commerce, that being on mobile devices like cellular phones, tablets and personal data assistants, or PDA's. Mobile commerce has become prominent enough that it should get its own mention. The covering of mobile commerce within the modern paradigm can be associated with a number of product categories and industries. The specific industry that will be focused on in this report is goods for the homes such as those for cooking, other food preparation and gardening. While mobile commerce may not be commonly associated with mobile and other forms of electronic commerce, the linkages and intersections between the two are rather extensive and that will only grow in the months and years to come.

When speaking of mobile commerce, there are three main types that are present in any given industry. Those three types are business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C) and consumer to consumer (C2C). Many people know of and discuss the second of those but all three are active in many situations and the mobile commerce revolution has only enhanced and advanced that. The examples of each of these three types are prevalent, even within the garden and home goods market. Perhaps the most obvious and apparent of these three is B2C. This is seen a lot when looking at firms like Home Depot, Lowe's and HomeGoods, just to name a few, selling goods to consumers. However, B2B and C2C is also rather pervasive and the emergence of mobile commerce has only advanced and expanded that. B2B is manifested in the form of companies that sell products in retail stores or on the websites for the same. Before those goods are put on shelves for consumers to pick from, they have to be bought from the companies that make and market them. For example, when Kobalt sells a wrench set to Home Depot so that the latter can sell it on their shelves, that is an example of B2B. Those goods are then transitioned to a B2C paradigm when they are stocked and sold from shelves. One notable caveat to that is that many consumers, especially in the home improvement and landscaping spheres, are themselves businesses. Indeed, they buy goods as well. The aforementioned wrench set may be bought for a do it yourself type person but it might also be a business that needs tools for its business operations, such as if a mowing company needs the tool to work on their mowers. A similar example would be if a landscaping company buys some plants to fill an order a customer made to landscape their lawn. In the end, it might be a B2C situation (either directly or indirectly), but there are most certainly transactions in the chain that are C2C in nature (Shoifot, 2016).

The other transaction type that hasn't been covered yet is C2C. Perhaps the best example of how the mobile revolution emerged for C2C transactions was eBay. However, eBay was just an online extension of what was already happening in garage sales, flea markets and so forth where consumers come together to sell each other goods for money or via straight trades for different goods. One thing that the mobile revolution brought about was that many companies are providing the forum and logistics to make a sale but they just take a cut of the sales and mostly stay out of the way. Even full-fledged online retail sales are getting into the mix. Amazon, for example, will sell a lamp or a lawn tool on their site. However, consumers can sell that same item on the Amazon website. Amazon gets a cut because they provide and run the site. However, it is technically a C2C transaction. More modern applications like LetGo and a few others are just forwarding that idea. Even so, there are still pure C2C transactions but they are a smaller and smaller part of the whole due to the ubiquity and presence of technology and firms that aid in providing these larger forums for individuals to sell their goods (Arline, 2015).

As can be seen already to a large degree, there is most certainly a segmentation of the market when it comes to home goods and garden items. This has always been the case but the lines of demarcation involved have clearly changed. As noted before, the differing forms of commerce, those being C2C, B2C and B2B have always been there. However, the first two of those have changed a ton in the wake of the mobile revolution. The changes to the barriers to entry and to the wider ability to sell items in a way that is efficient has quickly changed the paradigm. Rather than resist and obstruct such a thing, the larger companies are often (but not always) enable and empower consumers in this regard. For example, Amazon does this in part and eBay does so as its main model. However, other firms are less than involved in that way. However, this is clearly evened out by firms like eBay and LetGo that do the C2C enablement as its only (or main) business model. The lines between groups are further made hard to see given the amount of small businesses that are out there, how much they use mobile technology and commerce and the tools that they can use and employ that is so different than it used to be, such as taking credit cards and using other tools that were previously out of reach for non-business powers. The constant changes just mentioned above can be referred to as a dynamically continuous innovation. It is sometimes disruptive and chaotic but it is constantly moving (Schiffman & Wisenbelt, 2014).

When looking at the consumer behavior of those within the mobile commerce sphere, one has to remember that while the scope, depth and breadth of businesses has changed a lot, so has the amount (and types/demographics) of the people that access the market. The emergency of eBay was a major catalyst but sites like Amazon allowing for third party sales and other sites like eBay joining the fray has expanded the market and its segments to basically everyone that wishes to be part of said mobile revolution. Of course, people that really want to use the mobile revolution needs to use a smartphone or a tablet, at least when it comes to doing business. As such, this would make the totality of the market to be segmented just about anyone that uses smartphones and tablets for anything other than basic communication with others. With the exception of a good swath of older people that have disdain or ambivalence about technology, the market would be just about all adults. Teens and others are in the fray but there has to be access to banks and credit/debit cards since that is how payment is often rendered. Even so, parents and others extend their purchasing power to their kids and thus even people that are not technically and legally able to do business on their own are able to be part of the segments that are being spoken of in this instance. A recent article explains that roughly 4.77 people will have smartphones by 2017. This is surely not everyone out there, but it is a sound majority (Steinberg, 2017).

With all of this said, the basic market segments for home goods would be people that have small apartments, people that have homes, people that own vs. rent, those that do investment/maintenance for others and service-providers like home decorators and so forth. There are also the "mom and pop" outfits that do similar sales and efforts, but just do so in much smaller venues and/or on a much smaller scale. When it comes to lawn care and garden, there are similar patterns and paths and all three forms of mobile commerce are in motion to one degree or another. When it comes to a marketing mix for the paradigm in question, the advertising mix is going to mimic what is otherwise seen in the mobile revolution. A vast majority of the advertising and similar efforts will need to be done via online methods such as within the apps themselves, on social media, on the company websites and on other sites related to the product and that are partnered with. The one non-online venue that still has some heavy "sway" is television. However, printed media like newspapers, magazines and the like are on their way out in many regards, at least when it comes to mobile commerce and online operations in general. When it comes to home goods and retail, there would be two main forms of advertising. For more traditional stores and commerce venues like Home Depot and HomeGoods, they would use websites, social media and even a few traditional outlets like circulars in ads, ads in the newspapers themselves and so forth. However, the smaller venues and firms (not to mention regular consumers) would keep most (if not all) of their efforts online, whether it be direct communication with each other or the sites/apps that are out there to facilitate sales and transactions (Tode, 2015).

There are upsides and downsides to using the mobile commerce paradigm on the level that it exists right now. Upsides include ease in finding people to buy a product or service, the fact that the framework is much more efficient and well-run than prior frameworks and the way that it benefits everyone involved. Downsides include that it hurts the people and businesses that do not wish to use the mobile revolution, it makes it easier to be scammed or worse (e.g. Craigslist-related crimes) and the use of online operations and transactions does contribute a bit to the depersonalization and demarcation of society, at least according to some. The last of those is perhaps a cornerstone for concerns about family values. Mobile commerce is good in that it makes the world smaller and makes life easier. However, there is also the concern that people need to remain open and linked to the community around them. A good example would be a person using mobile commerce to buy from a local planter rather than from Home Depot (Fort, 2013).