Emerging Commerce
Whilst fundamental human motivations don’t change that much – the way we act on them do. One thing we have always done and will continue to do is buy the things we want and need, and try to seek out the best value whilst doing so. We will always transact, how we do so will always continue to evolve. Since 2013 Charlie has referred to this as ‘Emerging Commerce’
Our transaction history as humans began with a bartering economy, using animals as currency. We have seen an evolution of currency and trading habits through the ages from the shekel to early metal coins, precious metal coins, the banknote (FACTOID: the first banknote was a white leather hide) to gold, then retail making a play with store charge cards, credit cards, e-commerce (the first online transaction was a Pizza from Pizza Hut). We now have contactless conversational and mobile payment, and there are burgeoning technologies that use facial recognition to take payment. Further embedded technologies are appearing all the time.
Exciting, not to mention lucrative and fast-moving. These products allows us to better understand and shape behavior by providing data, lots of lovely data, to be studied and reacted to in real-time. Our team have been at the forefront of this revolution from early mobile payment apps to gaming and banking. We have gained invaluable practical knowledge I term this evolving understanding ‘Emerging Commerce’. There are many technologies that profess to have ‘the answer’ to this entire market but I don’t believe that a one size fits all solution will be the winner. The key here is making sure you use the technologies that best suit your immediate business drivers and future ambitions and keep very well informed of what’s coming next.
Smart brands have already started to use immediacy to grow their user base channels to market and reduce the cost of sale.