The malls in the Charleston, SC area have announced a service that will allow you to search for an item available at the mall. Customers are able to use their computer or cell phone to perform the search. Also, you can “reserve a product” to have a store place a hold on the item at the store. Sales annoucements and coupons can also be sent to you via email or text messaging.
Since I finished my shopping so early this year (2 weeks before), I didn’t *have* to use this service. However, I did play around with the service after I saw the announcement. In case you were wondering, no one has a Wii for sale here either (I’d try looking in February).
As I’ve mentioned before, we are looking at providing mobile banking for our customers. Announcements such as this could help us increase the adoption rate, provided we do begin to offer the service. I don’t know if the mall has advertisements up about their service, but I will check after the holidays.
Lately, I’ve seen people make the comment that they will take a “wait-and-see” approach, as it pertains to mobile banking. In our area, Bank of America, SunTrust, Wachovia, and BB&T have already announced their mobile banking solutions. BB&T is the only one that offers a SMS option in their solution.
From what I’ve seen on the market so far, I don’t know which offering will win out, be it WAP, SMS or a client application. However, I do think SMS should be a part of the solution. Only time will tell. As for now, I know how I’ll be reserving my copy of Mario Kart for the Wii.
