Mobile shoppers will be heading to stores in droves this holiday season but many are apprehensive about what they'll encounter there. Despite the increasing capabilities of smartphones and tablets for shopping, study after study shows that brick and mortar stores still overwhelmingly dominate as the purchase method of choice. A new study found that a large majority of consumers will shop in physical stores this holiday season compared to a relatively small group who will shop on mobile devices.

We may be getting closer to mobile voice commerce. At the opening of its new Mobile Innovation Center in Cambridge last night, various Nuance executives spoke about where voice may come into play in the future of mobile commerce. With about 12,000 employees and annual revenue of around $2 billion, Nuance is the voice recognition engine behind many consumer-to-computer interactions.

It looks like the race is on for retail sales associates to keep up with mobile consumers. The question is how to keep up with the pace of the mobile shopper.

As retailers prepare for holiday shoppers, the influence of mobile will be greater this time around. One of the most obvious factors is the increasing number of smartphone and tablet owners. And based on new research, there's going to be a varying amount of mobile activity around holiday shopping, especially depending on the device.

Mobile consumers are interested in using their phones for transactions, but those transactions don't necessarily include mobile payments. I just came across some interesting research from TSYS in its 2013 Consumer Payment Choice Study. The third annual study looks at consumer payment preferences, primarily dealing with credit and debit cards. But deep inside the study is one question that provides some insight around mobile transactions and payments. What I find interesting is not only what consumers are interested in but also what does not interest them, even though there are no majorities in any case.

Mobile payment platforms continue to come in all shapes and sizes. While some mobile wallet providers use their names, others are quietly enabling well-known brand. Which way will the consumer go?

Retailers failing to satisfy mobile shoppers are losing many of those customers. A new global study of consumer experiences shows that customers are increasingly frustrated by the level of services they experience and that they have to contact a company multiple times for the same problem.

There are some obvious opportunities for retailers to help mobile shoppers in their stores. One of the most obvious, highlighted in a recent study, is to provide Wi-Fi for shoppers for product research while in the store. However, there are other factors that would help as well.

This holiday season could put mobile commerce even more solidly on the map. Several weeks back, a top executive from comScore said at a meeting that holiday shopping this year could cause the last quarter to top the $10 billion spending mark. That statement has since been bolstered by research pointing in the same direction. A recent study found that more consumers (42%) plan to shop more on their smartphone or tablet this year compared to a year ago.

This is a tale of two mobile price checks. Over the course of this week, I had the opportunity to experience two totally different price check experiences. As a matter of course when shopping, I use my phone to scan product barcodes to make sure the price is right, as it were. I've been doing this for a number of years. In some cases, as a consumer I've had to help sales associates understand what price matching is. Before even going to mobile scanning apps, the first question, almost as a benchmark, is "do you price match?"