The Mobile Conundrum - Part 2 of 2

Continued from The Mobile Conundrum - Part 1 of 2...

Let me throw in the last bit of complexity to this one. Is it really bad if we can’t solve the entire problem today? There are people, we know, who research online (“this one has cool reviews”) and buy offline (“I know the guy”). There are others who research offline (“I like the feel of the phone”) and buy online (“better price online”). And of-course there are people who do both online, or both offline. Think for a moment about a similar framework around mobile. There would be people who research on the mobile (e.g. quick-price-check) and buy on the PC. Why not build out something for them? There’s more to this.

Lots of us were brought up on plain-jane information-only websites - text and a few images. Now the mobile adds multiple dimensions to this.

a) Now almost all mobiles have GPS. Users will share geographic information when there’s a proposition (e.g. the now much touted local-deals thing). Does our website leverage this information? Have we thought about propositions here?
b) Now many phones have inputs like the accelerometer. Have we thought about how we could leverage that? If I could shake my phone to navigate, it could be cool. It could even be, like the Wii, ground-breaking.
c) We all know the app real-estate is limited, we still expect the consumer to install one app per retailer. Maybe we can start thinking about platform plays, where the front-end is built by whoever knows the user-segment best.
d) It could be time to move on from what my facebook friends like to what my phone contacts like - most of us have our closer people there, and at least some junk contacts on facebook.

Are we thinking hard on this? Or we’re opening up the field for a new breed of mobile-first operators to walk in and cash in? We should start thinking about pure-engagement providers on the mobile who may move into eCommerce and for all we know, provide a better experience than us eCommerce guys.

How do you fight a suicide bomber?

There’s a term called asymmetric warfare that is commonly used for terrorism. One party in this war (the Government) has to secure all vulnerable points to win, while the other (the Terrorist) has to penetrate just one to win. Naturally, in most cases, the terrorist wins. It is just so much easier.

Of late, I’ve been wondering if we should worry about another similar, though not same, problem. How do you fight competition that wants to blow itself up? You come to the meeting armed with logic, profit and loss, analytics; while this other guy just parts his jacket to show you a string of bombs strapped to his belly. This kind of competition is not rational, or maybe is, but not in your conventional sense. You seek victory while he seeks martyrdom. You seek P&L while he seeks valuation. He’s happy showing a 200% rise in traffic even if he can’t sustain it beyond the year because he hopes to sell some stake within the year (aside, I know the offline guys are giggling here, guess how much traffic we can build at our stores if we sell at a loss :D). Worst, our suicide-bomber will spend till the consumers are so drunk on a cocktail of discounts, cash-on-delivery, coupons, no-questions-unlimited-returns and a variety of unknown ingredients that any rational person can’t persuade them to listen to anything sensible. 

What is worse is that your hope of sanity prevailing is faint. When this particular guy runs out of money, the next free-drinks guy walks in, and till there’s even one joker left in the pack, the suicide bombing continues. Even if someone does it sporadically, you’re done. 

Like the Uncle who walks into your house and spoils your kids on ice-cream, now the businesses are left dealing with irrational expectations of spoilt kids. eCommerce consumers would ideally like everything free, next they’d like to be paid to use eCommerce I guess. Soon we’ll have to send chauffeurs to their homes, with iPads encased in soft blue velvet for the users to tap - all for products with negative contributions. 

If Soft-Drink Giants can agree (unofficially, of course) on pricing for 200ml of soda, why can’t we eCommerce guys have some sanity?