Marketers have forever been looking for better ways to target shoppers. All sorts of location technologies ranging from GPS and Wi-Fi to beacons and specific mobile apps have been tapped over the years. At retail, beacons have been used for the last few years to tell where shoppers go in a store and sometimes message them based on where they are at any given moment.

Retailers get several shots at winning over mobile shoppers. At first, there's the research phase, when a consumer is at home browsing on a tablet or smartphone in the early research phase of their shopping. There's location-based targeting, where consumer interactions can range from simple location monitoring to location-based messaging or marketing.

Digital wallets continue to look for some respect. After kicking around for years, a mere 16% of consumers have ever used a digital wallet, based on a new study. Even worse, consumer awareness and understanding of digital wallets is low, according to the study conducted by Forrester Research for JPMorgan Chase. The study, 'The Intersection of Payments and Commerce in a Digital World,' comprised an online survey of 1,500 U.S. adults who go online at least weekly, and a survey of 800 merchants responsible for their company's payment decisions.

Mobile shopping may get a whole new meaning. Buying from a store was always pretty straightforward before the Net. A person would get up and go shopping. No big deal. The commercial Web of course changed all that, at least from a knowledge standpoint. A consumer could buy online, but they also could research online at home and still get up and go to the store, which is still what most people do from a product purchase standpoint.