Acting on impulse
Giant online auction site eBay has launched a major new marketing campaign in the US, which provides a strong indication of where it thinks the action is headed. The ‘When it's on your mind it's on eBay' campaign targets the impulse-purchaser, who is increasingly indulging their baser materialism via mobile devices.
Of course, this message being carried by highly-trained US marketing professionals, don't refer to them as shopaholics or compulsive retail addicts, but ‘passionate shoppers'. But the sort of person we're talking about is someone who sees a shiny thing and wants the thing to appear in their possession immediately, as if magicked into existence by a genie.
"eBay's target customers are shopping enthusiasts - people who are passionate about shopping, whenever and wherever the moment of inspiration strikes," said Richelle Parham, CMO of eBay North America. "Shopping enthusiasts are heavy online users with a particular affinity for mobile shopping, and this campaign extends eBay's powerful brand to reach them at the moment they want to shop."
Of course eBay will be hoping the use of mobile devices for shopping - which undoubtedly makes impulse-purchasing easier - catches on among those of us capable of looking at something without immediately having to own it. This campaign seems to be as much to introduce mobile shopping to new users as to preach to the converted. The ads are also quite amusing, as you can see below.
eBay's payments arm - PayPal - seems also to be well positioned to capitalise on the mobile device revolution. Forbes reported on an analyst upgrade in which it was anticipated that, due to mobile, PayPal will soon become the biggest part of eBay's business.
"We believe PayPal will capitalize on its superior position in mobile payments, extending its 25-30% growth for several years, turning into eBay's largest business by 2014 and leading to significant multiple expansion," wrote Wedbush analyst Gil Luria.
"Based on the mobile payments/brick and mortar strategy components introduced over the last couple of days, we believe PayPal will capitalize on its superior position created by its existing customer base, fraud-prevention prowess, ability to scale and proven business model. We believe PayPal's ability to leverage several technologies (i.e. cards, phone/pin at terminal, card not present, NFC) to expand into brick and mortar [point of sale] in the immediate future will help it extend its lead over other mobile wallet providers."
