• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, October 7, 2013

For mobile shoppers, brick and mortar still rules.

That was the key message repeated in various ways at an opening panel at Money2020 in Las Vegas today.

Members of the panel, titled Loyalty and m-Commerce: Making In-Store Mobile Commerce Personal, were Mike Grimes, SVP of Catalina and Keith Anderson, VP of RetailNet Group.

One of the issues tackled was the discount tipping point to move customers to pick one retailer over another.

Anderson suggested that the play was to own the trip to the store and to offer deals with a high degree of relevance.

Grimes pointed to the years of experience of in-store scanning with supermarket chain Stop & Shop showing that offers based on the location of the shopper were effective.

In what may seem counterintuitive, he also said that people who scan as they shop spend significantly more per shopping trip than those who don’t.

As the panel moderator, I asked about usage of apps vs. mobile websites for shopping. Both Grimes and Anderson suggested that most shoppers are using apps rather than mobile websites for retail shopping.

Some large retailers have told me that the majority of their shoppers are using their mobile websites, so the mobile shopping access method seems to be based on the particular retailer.

Both speakers agreed that price matching policies of stores were at times somewhat baffling to consumers, since many lack consistency in which sellers they will match.

They also agreed that retailers are challenged to compete with Amazon. And that’s where the asset of brick and mortar comes in.

“You have the customer right there,” said Anderson.

The challenge, of course, is to satisfy that customer, many of whom would rather research product information from their phone rather than from a salesperson.

Based on mobile shopper location, the retailer has the advantage.

Still to be determined is what they do with it.