Krispy Kreme found the right ingredients in a branded Facebook application game as it attempted to further mobile engagement among customers in Korea and advertise its new strawberry donuts. The global donut and coffeehouse chain sought to promote its Real Strawberries product line to consumers in Korea, and tapped gamification as the marketing channel of choice. The Facebook-based game resulted in 88 percent engagement and 36.4 percent of players interacting with the Krispy Kreme Facebook page in some manner.

Google has been testing a new service that will allow consumers to purchasing products directly through advertisements in a move to expand its presence in the mobile commerce space. The new feature, called Purchases with Google, is specifically designed for mobile consumers, giving them more opportunities to shop for and purchase products when conducting searches online. The new service represents yet another step in Google’s plans to become a major player in the mobile commerce space. Google is seeing more competition coming from others that have entered into the mobile shopping space. As such, it is looking for ways to better engage …

Italian jeweler Bulgari is bringing traditional craftsmanship into the digital ecosystem with an intelligent timepiece focused on data security. The Diagono E Magnesium is a fully mechanical timepiece equipped with NFC technology, which allows the watch to act as a key that opens a secure Bulgari Vault smartphone application. As wealthy consumers are doing more online, from banking and shopping to email, technology that makes these interactions safer will be a welcome addition.

Customers are on the move and developing more beneficial shopping patterns by harnessing connected technologies to simplify and optimize the path to purchase, according to a survey of 2,500 consumers, conducted by Blackhawk Engagement Solutions. The smartphone is the most prevalent Internet device, with 71 percent of shoppers using one daily, followed by notebooks (66 percent), desktop computers (50 percent), and tablets (43 percent). Additionally, TV watching and Internet shopping are closely linked, with more than half (58 percent) of consumers shopping at home while watching TV, and 47 percent of consumers learning about products, special sales and shopping news on TV.

Ride-sharing application Uber is leveraging a partnership with British soccer club Chelsea FC to deliver the team’s limited-edition club kits to riders in select cities worldwide. The cross-marketing opportunity may open new doors for Uber, which now faces increasing competition from fellow taxi apps such as Lyft and RideScout. It also may prompt fans of Chelsea FC to use Uber over another app in the hopes of receiving one of the kits, which will be available to Uber customers five days prior to the rest of the public.

The Peninsula Hotels is celebrating its recently released new mobile experience by offering consumers exclusive discounts when they book reservations on their mobile phones or tablets. The Peninsula Hotels only recently introduced the mobile-optimized Web site and is clearly looking to draw consumers’ attention to its upgraded services. By offering exclusive deals and discounts, The Peninsula Hotels will likely prompt consumers to remember its Web site when booking their next vacation.

Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon, the country's top ecommerce companies, are trying to bring on board makers of televisions, refrigerators and air-conditioners in a move aimed at benefitting consumers, manufacturers and online retailers. Appliance and white goods manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, Whirlpool and Godrej, which had cracked down on online sales of their products at heavy discounts, are now considering ecommerce seriously. The success of smartphone sale ..   

A billion dollars here, a billion renminbi there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money being spent to develop China's mobile-commerce market. Last month, Alibaba Group and Ant Financial Services Group said they would spend nearly $1 billion on a joint venture aimed at growing the market in China for local services that can be ordered and paid for using smartphones. To back up that effort, Alibaba today said it would sink RMB 1 billion ($161 million) into an investment fund to encourage independent software developers to build a new generation of smartphone apps that leverage the ecosystem of China's largest e-commerce …

When it comes to hunting for products online, m-commerce is exploding among Millennials, but there are certain mobile shopping apps that are attracting a lot more attention than others, and according to a recent Forbes report, the difference is a striking one. When compared to last year, the difference is massive, considering that the 2014 total was estimated to be around $180 billion. Because of mobile web limitations, retailers have been choosing to create their ownmobile shopping apps so that they would have greater control over the experience that they will be able to provide to their customers. This also makes …

In Canada, the major banks are working hard to implement the technology that is required to allow consumers to be able to adopt mobile payments, but at the same time, less than a quarter of the adults in the country can actually use it. The banks are highly enthusiastic about creating mobile payments apps and services that will allow people to use their smartphones instead of debit and credit cards when they make a purchase in a store. That said, the whitepaper pointed out that only under 25 percent of consumers in Canada actually have all of the requirements that are needed to …