Will customers scan barcodes? Apparently not.

… but businesses are not ready to deliver it yet.

A new study by the DMA and Empirix on consumer and business attitudes to mobile shopping has identified a significant gap. Consumers are ready for it now, but business aren’t ready. The study surveyed over 3500 consumers and 1500 businesses, many of them customer contact centres.

A couple of interesting figures came out of the report:

Much like the DMA/IAB study last year, this time most consumers want promotional offers from retail brands on their mobile. However, privacy and security were key to this. 79% said they would like promotional offers but only if the brand cannot see their personal data. This is clearly an opportunity for pull-based offers through social location, such as Facebook Deals.

The other bit of interesting data was when consumers were asked about QR codes … 32% new what it was, but had never used one and 39% didn’t know what it was. That’s over 71% of people who weren’t using them. Whilst brands are keen to push QR, it seems that consumers just don’t see the point.

From the business perspective, 75% of companies thought that implementing mobile would be at an additional cost to them. Even more significant, 89% of the companies didn’t have a mobile strategy.

Underlying all of this gap is the difference in perception between consumers and businesses. Brands are still stuck in their traditional silos: Call Centres, Digital, ATL etc and channels; sales, marketing, CRM and customer service. As consumers, we don’t work like that, and expect to communicate with brands from any device about any matter. Many people in the industry talk about the ‘single customer view’ rather than silo-ing. This is an essential step for business to make if they want to be getting the most out of mobile and social media.