Beacons continue to find their way into more parts of the mobile shopper journey. While they can excel at triggering relevant information to a consumer at a specific location, beacons also can provide actionable insights well away from the little transmitting device. One of the times information gleaned from a consumer passing by a beacon can be used is after the fact, as I wrote about here earlier this week.

While the holiday shopping forecasts are coming out fast and furiously, some insights may be gleaned from shopping trends compared to last year. During the last month, more people were near stores, more of them went in and more of them stayed longer, based on the latest in a series of monthly tracking studies.

Welcome to the world of post-beaconing. For many months, beacons have been going to work in the marketplace, at places like large retail stores and sports stadiums. Those beacons generally have been used to awaken an app in a consumer's smartphone and, via that app, provide deals, coupons or useful information based on location.

For mobile commerce, convenience is king. While convenience may mean different things to different people, it looks like one of the main reasons consumers connect. While consumers around the world go online for any number of reasons, there are four primary needs, based on a new study.

The price better be right for in-store holiday shoppers this time around. Among many other facilitations, mobile is providing more windows into product pricing and more shoppers will be peering through, based on yet another mobile shopping study. Researching and comparing store prices is near the top of the list of how shoppers will use their smartphones, according to the Online Insights study, comprising a survey of 786 U.S. adults conducted by Burst Media and Rhythm NewMedia.

Mobile shopping activity will be under many research microscopes this holiday season, all looking to measure the impact on online and in-store sales. While it's obvious that smartphones are used throughout the shopping process, I always find it interesting to see exactly where and how it's happening. Another in a string of holiday shopping studies came out his week that again showed some of those indications.

While beacons themselves don't really do a lot, they're going to cause a lot of things to be done. Aside from the misplaced perceptions that beacons will cause consumers to be bombarded with unwanted ads as they walk through stores, the little devices are starting to be used for simple services. The process is somewhat like the flow of rolling out mobile payments. The technology has to be deployed and installed and then the particular system has to be turned on or activated, along with staff training.

The beacon tidal wave is growing. Following a successful three-month trial of beacons in several of its stores, Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), which owns Lord & Taylor and Hudson's Bay, is rolling out beacons in all of its U.S. and Canadian stores.

While various approaches to mobile payments continue, the questions remains if there will be a primary driver. It's not like consumers have been waiting with baited breath for years to be able to replace cash and credit card payments by using their phone.