Introduction
Technological advancement has made business activities convenient and efficient, and the globe has been reduced to a village. The introduction of smartphones has enabled smooth and straightforward connectivity of people across the world. A buyer in the U.S can review and purchase an item from China and get it delivered to his doorstep. Similarly, a seller is able to advertise and sell a product to numerous customers globally without necessarily traveling. E-commerce, therefore, refers to the ability to do business transactions without the seller and the buyer having physical contact.
Main body
Businesses worldwide are now facing the challenge of either adapting to the ever-developing technological advancement or being rendered obsolete when stuck at brick-and-mortar tradition. Enterprises are now struggling to be at the level of online shopping companies like Amazon, which operate 100% on e-commerce (Tsai et al., 2017). Brick-and-mortar businesses are now challenged to join the online shopping bandwagon to stay afloat. Industries that operate from a specific building are referred to as brick-and-mortar companies. Such marketing strategies as Location-Based Marketing has been developed to improve and make online shopping more comfortable and convenient.
Location-based marketing refers to the advertisement targeting buyers and potential customers within a specific location or geography. The app sends a text message alert to the customers on the android mobile phones, informing them of the nearby business wares. Therefore, location-based marketing is essential for brick-and-mortar and online businesses (Zhu et al., 2016). The benefits of a Location-based marketing strategy as a component of the e-commerce range include affordability, improved relationship with customers, the attraction of more clients, converting impulses to sales, and the ability to research the business.
Place-based marketing seems cheaper compared to traditional advertisement methods such as media. Business owners are required to fill out membership forms and ensure their apps are run. The location-based strategy connects the targeted customers simply as it only reaches those within the walking area (Guo & Lai, 2017). Thus, such a plan best fits brick-and-mortar businesses for its affordability and ability to reach targeted customers at a low cost.
Additionally, business owners can understand their customers better through conducting reviews and check-ins on a particular product, thus identifying what exactly attracts new clients. Customer complaints and new orders are also factored in during the reviews, giving instant feedback on a particular product (Tsai et al., 2017). Therefore, business owners have full knowledge of most customers’ tastes, preferences, and fashion sense without conducting real research.
Consumers spend more time on mobile phones, thus enabling brick-and-mortar companies to enter into new markets. Online traffic jams have become advantageous to businesses that have adopted location-based marketing strategies, which makes it easier to attract prospective customers walking by and those on online platforms (Guo & Lai, 2017). Some customers could not know that such a business existed within that locality, but they could step in and get persuaded to purchase from the shop through text messages. Therefore, business owners can turn impulse into real buying clients.
Conclusion
Brick-and-mortar companies should adopt leverage location-based marketing to expand sales outside their building localities by inviting more potential buyers who happen to be passing. Further analysis of the target market will help increase sales by attracting new clients while still maintaining loyal ones. Technological trends have continued to influence the demand for economy mobile e-commerce. Therefore, further research will help formulate effective policies to deal with the growing need for online business.
References
Guo, W.-C., & Lai, F.-C. (2017). Prices, Locations and Welfare When an Online Retailer Competes with Heterogeneous Brick-and-Mortar Retailers. The Journal of Industrial Economics, 65(2), 439–468.
Tsai, Y.-T., Wang, S.-C., Yan, K.-Q., & Chang, C.-M. (2017). Precise positioning of marketing and behavior intentions of location-based mobile commerce in the internet of things. Symmetry, 9(8), 139.
Zhu, W.-Y., Peng, W.-C., Chen, L.-J., Zheng, K., & Zhou, X. (2016). Exploiting viral marketing for location promotion in location-based social networks. ACM Transactions on Knowledge Discovery from Data (TKDD), 11(2), 1–28.