RetailTechNews’ weekly roundup brings you up-to-date research findings from around the world. In this week’s edition: Unified Commerce Solutions Booming; A Third of Smartphone Users Will Pay Via Mobile in 2018; and Mobile Email Marketing Draws Level with Desktop as M-Commerce Grows.

Unified Commerce Solutions Booming

By the end of 2020, 81% of retailers will deploy unified commerce platforms, to support commerce across the enterprise’s stores, mobile users and the web, according to a survey by Boston Retail Partners (BRP). This is seen as essential to competing in the omnichannel environment.

The survey finds that 28% of respondents have implemented unified commerce, compared to 9% the previous year. Retailers are making progress on implementing unified commerce platforms. Last year, BRP predicted 73% of retailers would have such a platform in place by 2019, and 22% already had one deployed.

Moving forward, the top three priorities of retailers for the year ahead are:

- Customer identification and personalisation of the customer experience (62%)

- Alignment of the customer experience across mobile apps the web (54%)

- Empowering associates with mobile tools (51%)

Retailers are modifying the technology used to identify customers in their stores by decreasing their use of mobile websites, which declined from 40% in 2017 to 28% in 2018, and increasing the use of Media Access Control (MAC) addresses as unique identifiers by 26%. Also on the rise are beacons (19%), and Bluetooth (16%).

A Third of Smartphone Users Will Pay Via Mobile in 2018

In 2018, more than a third of smartphone users worldwide will use their mobile phone to pay for a purchase at a physical point of sale (POS) at least once every six months, eMarketer estimates. By 2021, that figure will reach 39.8%, or roughly 1.12 billion people.

eMarketer expects that 13.2% of the global population will be proximity mobile payment users this year. By 2021, that proportion is expected to grow to 17.2%. China is the world’s leader in proximity payments: eMarketer projects that more than 61% of mobile payment users in 2018 will be based in the country.

The main driver of growth in the number of proximity mobile payment users will be rising retailer acceptance, in tandem with the expansion of the 'big three' international providers – Android Pay, Apple Pay, and Samsung Pay – and China’s WeChat Pay and AliPay, which have been expanding throughout Asia-Pacific.

Mobile Email Marketing Draws Level with Desktop as M-Commerce Grows

Email marketing reached a milestone in 2017 – for the first time ever, conversion rates for both desktop and mobile were equivalent, according to new data released yesterday by Yes Lifecycle Marketing.

The report finds that, in 2017, smartphone orders accounted for 46% of all email-driven orders, which is a 33% increase year-on-year. During the same period, tablet and desktop orders saw declines of 14% and 18%, respectively, indicating smartphone’s growing dominance as it edges out other devices.

While desktop and mobile are now equal in terms of conversion rate, desktop continues to drive higher average order value (AOV). The report shows that mobile AOV remains about 40% lower than desktop AOV (USD$58 vs USD$96, respectively) and this ratio has remained consistent over the last three years. The disparity indicates that consumers still value desktop functionality for larger purchases.