The future of retail lies in mobile phones, The Economist Intelligence Unit believes. According to the study, by 2020 retailers will primarily use gadgets to connect with consumers. So far, Russia is far from such trends, Kommersant FM interlocutors note.

Mobile commerce will become an important means of retailing. This forecast is made by The Economist Intelligence Unit together with MasterCard. By 2020, cell phones will become the most important channel of communication with customers. According to the study, already about a third of the retailers surveyed constantly use gadgets to communicate with consumers. Internet sites, brick-and-mortar stores, call centers, personal computers - all this will remain a thing of the past.

Russia will begin to more actively introduce mobile commerce into retail only when Western competitors begin to engage in this, says independent expert on the mobile gadgets market Mikhail Fadeev.

“The majority of payments and communications with consumers will be made from mobile phones or tablets - a completely logical prediction. If you are developing a website, be sure to look at how it will look on a mobile phone of the main platforms - on Apple, on Android, on Windows Phone. Because before Until now, quite a significant number of companies in Russia have apparently never opened their sites on mobile platforms, because on phones these sites look simply terrible. Unfortunately, at least in Russia, this segment has not yet received due attention. is not paid," he noted.

Mobile phones are unlikely to become an alternative to the existing system of communications between buyers and sellers, says Dmitry Ryabinin, chief analyst of the Hi-Tech Mail.Ru project.

"The functionality of the phone is limited and cannot replace everything. It is very premature to talk about any forecasts, especially before 2020. At the moment, such a forecast seems very bold to me, because neither hardware nor software allows this. What will happen in two, even three years, and even more so in seven years, it’s very difficult to say, because five years ago tablets were not popular. It seems to me that everything depends on the software and the possibility of promoting certain companies in this segment,” - he believes.

In the future, according to the study, trade will be driven by personalization of the offer. Sellers will specifically offer goods that the consumer needs. This segment will become the main target for investment in retail.

Pavel Korsunov

"The websites of many Russian companies look simply terrible on a phone screen"