• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, December 6, 2013

Some retailers may be missing the grander picture around mobile commerce.

In a recent survey about CMOs backing away from mobile technology, only roughly a third (38%) of retail CMOs said mobile is part of their marketing strategy this holiday season, a significant drop from just a year ago.

Natalie Kotlyar, a partner at BDO, which conducted the survey, said that mobile commerce is growing, pointing out that consumers are using their phones for research but not for the actual purchase.

Many studies continue to measure mobile activity at the transaction stage of a purchase. This is one of the reasons it appears tablet commerce is ahead of smartphones, since more people make an actual purchase from a tablet than from a phone.

The notion of where the physical transaction – where the money actually changes hands – is but one stage in the mobile path to purchase.

Mobile creates a totally new dimension around the transaction, and that actual moment of purchase is being influenced multiple times outside of that moment.

Rather than there being a disconnect in phases of the Mobile Shopping Life Cycle , they are intertwined.

When someone researches on a smartphone, sees product photos or videos on a tablet, texts back and forth with friends about an intended purchase, taps into a geo-targeted message, responds to a location-based coupon offer and then makes a purchase in a store, there is a significant mobile influence.

The particular retailer may not see or measure any of this when a shopper makes an in-store transaction.

When looking at smartphone and tablet transactions, retailers are seeing only one piece of the mobile shopping cycle.

Mobile commerce is not just about the transaction. It is really about the new mobile shopping process.