Smartphones have altered the way the society acts and behaves because these phones make it possible for people to do virtually anything. Whether it is checking emails, connecting through social media, researching on the Internet or performing complex tasks using thousands of apps, smartphones have it all.
Advancements in technology have even enabled people to shop through their smartphones. For the consumer, this is a huge advantage as they can buy anything they want from anywhere. In our time-strapped world, mobile retail aids people to multi-task which means they can shop while doing some other task. This flexibility and convenience is what makes it so widely popular. A study by Nielsen shows that 45 percent of online sales occur through smartphones and this alone accounted for more than $991 million in sales in 2013.
From the perspective of businesses, smartphones have opened a whole new world of opportunities for them. Using this platform, businesses can reach out to more and more customers. Many online retailers are using a wide range of tactics to expand their mobile sales. Other than sales, smartphones are having an impact on other business areas as well.
An essential part of every business strategy is analytics. More than 100 different tables and data are used to understand customer preferences and to predict trends. Even these tasks are slowly taken over by smartphones. Further, many of the in-store technologies such as CRM, PoS markets, RFID, Wi-Fi and retail M2M are increasingly done through smartphones.
This trend means businesses have to come up with strategies that will not only affect their sales and marketing campaigns, but also their overall business processes. Therefore, it is important for retail companies to come up with comprehensive strategies that will help the business to make the best use of smartphones.
Edited by
Cassandra Tucker 
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