Guest Analysis – Omnicommerce: What Consumers Expect

Lorena Harris
August 27, 2013 –  As consumers incorporate mobile devices into their shopping behavior, those mobile channels are not replacing traditional channels, they are being added to them. So a given consumer may be interacting with a merchant across many channels – often, simultaneously.

Merchants need to meet those consumers wherever they are. With increasing cross-channel activity, that means taking an “omnicommerce” approach that offers a consistent, high-quality customer experience in all channels. And the payment industry will need to support that approach.

What are consumers looking for? Recent research from Vantiv and Mercator Advisory Group points to some fundamental must-haves for the cross-channel customer experience. For example, the research underscored the fact that consumers want security in all channels, including mobile and online—and they are increasingly concerned about it. Many consumers said that they have experienced some type of payment fraud, and 46% of those said that they now think about security with every transaction.

Overall, consumers today actually feel slightly less secure with most payment methods than they did a year ago, and they regard emerging methods to be less secure than traditional methods. In fact, nearly half of the consumers said that security issues are the main reason that they might hesitate to try mobile payments.

Some of this can be addressed through education. In addition to strengthening technical security, the industry has an opportunity to help consumers understand the facts. Security is a complex topic, and consumers often have inaccurate beliefs about thieves stealing mobile signals and payment information with ease. Undoubtedly, many consumers are unaware of the fact that encryption, tokenization, multifactor authentication, and “device fingerprinting” have the potential to make mobile devices more secure than traditional cards, or that cloud-based mobile payments mean that they won’t have to keep sensitive payment information on their phones.

On another front, the research found that consumers like discounts, promotions, and other incentives and are likely to want access to those across all channels. Such incentives can be effective in modifying consumer purchasing behavior: 44% of consumers said that they would switch from their current preferred payment type to another type if doing so provided a discount, and 42% would switch to earn added rewards of some type.

As they develop their omnicommerce strategies, companies shouldn’t underestimate the power of these incentives to counteract security fears. Although consumers worry about security, only 24% said they would switch if they experienced a security breach with their payment method—about half the number that would do so for an incentive.

Source: Vantiv Insights 2013 Research. For more on payment trends, visit http://vantiv.com/research.

[spacer height=3] [divide] [spacer height=3] Lorena Harris is VP, Corporate Marketing at Vantiv, where she leads the Vantiv Insights Research Program.

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