In Japan, a growing ranks of mobile phone shoppers, many of them women, are snapping up cosmetics, clothes, accessories and even food by ordering them with their mobile phones, writes The Herald Tribune.
From [Textually.org] through [Findory]
“In fact, sales using mobile phones are one of the fastest-growing Internet businesses.
Such revenue – excluding nonphysical goods like software, entertainment and travel services – reached Â¥110 billion, or $992 million, in 2004, up from Â¥58.6 billion in 2003.
Japanese people have a very close relationship to their cellphones. “Women in their 20s can enter faster on the cellular phone than on the PC,” said Internet analyst Taku Nishikawa. Besides, the e-payment mechanisms built into some phones have eliminated the need to tap in credit card numbers.
Buyers on the move are often spurred into buying when they receive a sales pitch on their phone. “You are likely to read mails that arrive at your cellular phone” more than ones that come to your PC, explained Saori Uegaki, a stockbroker in Osaka.”
[...]
“Yahoo Japan’s new cellphone site with Index is intended to offer the same goods sold on the PC-based Yahoo Shopping site. Other Internet players are also betting on the mobile market. Sales of goods at the Rakuten Internet shopping mall have been growing by 60 percent to 70 percent annually. But sales via cellphone have been rising by 100 percent to 200 percent a year since late 2003.”
An interesting phenomenon, that could turn out to be quite irritating when not decently regulated. Many of the cellular phones customers use nowadays aren’t capable of keeping much data yet, so the message is treated rather cursory. The message needs to be short and strong, because if it takes too long to send or read, the customer will tune out.