Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

Adoption of alternate Technologies- Not all retailers are equally ready to adopt new technologies.Adoption behavior needs to be assessed by understanding customer preferences. If shoppers‘ attitudestowards receiving marketing content on their mobile devices through Bluetooth are not positive, theretailer may not be willing to shift to newer technologies that provide location based marketing.Increase in Smart Phone penetration: Though emerging markets have seen a low smart phone penetration,it is expected to increase over a period of time. Customers in these markets, especially the youth, haveshown a growing preference for smart phones as noted by the service providers and their preference forlucrative buying schemes in the smart phone market. Smart Apps and Device Management solutionsappear to hasten the adoption of alternate technologiesApple phones and Bluetooth standards: File transfers via Bluetooth are not native to the iOS devices. Theyrequire additional applications to be installed and configured. With increased sales of Apple Devices,acceptance for proximity marketing initiatives via Bluetooth can hit a roadblock if Bluetooth were tobecome a legacy file transfer protocol. Emergence of newer file transfer methods like Near FiledCommunication (NFC) is also seen as a threat to Bluetooth.Impact of Social Media: A social media network stands today as the most preferred channel for marketers.One receives marketing content from the retailer and from their network of friends who have hadexperiences with a product or service. Social Media channels like Facebook have also included LocationBase services. Within the network, a person can know where each person is located. This information canbe leveraged by retailers to provide content based on the location using traditional channels like SMS,MMS, Social Media Updates and Email marketing.Aesthetics: Affluent customers, during current recessionary times are also patronizing low end retailers.These retailers focus on the functional aspects rather than the emotional aspects of the retail experience.However, they now need to improve aesthetics and décor of the stores. Independent Stores wish to avoidusing physical cables/wires for network connectivity and the size of the node should be small to remainhidden from the public.Culture: Retailers need to respect the customer‘s privacy both in terms of access to personal informationand spamming the customer with marketing messages. In emerging countries there is generally noregulatory framework for retailers to provide marketing content to mobile devices through Bluetooth.In emerging markets, the more progressive retailers may not be content with a standalone proximitymarketing solution. Like their western counterparts, they are also keen to integrate their point of salesystems with other solutions like CRM and ERP. So a solution provider should enable analytics pertainingto new and existing customers for enhancing marketing performance.Way ForwardThis study has been done specifically for UAE- which is different from other emerging economies such asBrazil, Russia, India, and South Africa. It will be necessary for one to conduct a similar study for thechosen market to understand the perceptions for designing pertinent proximity marketing solutions.It is also suggested that, the number of attributes for the study be reduced for sake of simplicity. Samplesize needs to be larger so the inferences can be more reliable. A company marketing Bluetooth marketingsolution will be able to use its resources productively by identifying and reaching out to retailers willing totake more risk and initiative i.e. lead users and innovators (Eisenberg, 2011).