Mobile Bazaar
From Bangladesh via the Wall Street Journal comes an interesting story on bringing the networked economy to everyone with a cell phone. CellBazaar provides what we’d call Craigslist or the classifieds via a cell phone. CellBazaar supports various specific methodologies for SMS, voice, and web access. The system lets users post items for sale, look for items to buy, and appears to help with some form of payment system. Having connected buyer and seller, mobile payments enable closing the deal.
What’s different about US mobile adoption? I’ll offer two suggestions. First, we started on the networked economy from our old copper telephone wires. And we built our networked economy on computers with big screens. Bangladesh and many other developing areas skipped the copper telephone line and moved straight to cell phones. And large segments of developing societies are skipping large screens as well. When we moved into online commerce in the 90’s PayPal (and other competitors) offered a variety of payment options outside the familiar cash, check or charge options. Developing countries haven’t had ready access to check and credit cards, instead they focused on cash and barter. Where we had credit cards that could be used online, cash and barter doesn’t travel over cell towers, so new payment mechanisms are required. Which payment mechanisms developed overseas might be adopted here?
What other kinds of applications might be developed there and adopted here? Today farmers travel to specific locations for livestock sales, fishermen bring their catch to market. Could texting reduce travel? Improve pricing or price competition?
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February 10th, 2009 at 8:05 am
I think I found some insight to your question regarding price and price competition on the CellBazaar website:
Season for Change
Every year Abdul gathers his harvest, and then travels to the market with it. He dreads the day he has to face Jabbar Ali, a ruthless businessman, who buys jackfruits from him.With all his sunk costs, Abdul often has no choice but to sell his fruits, even if at a minimal rate. But this year, polli-phone user Sokina shows Abdul how to post his fruits on CellBazaar.
From this, I would infer that Abdul can now enter his sales negotiations armed with current pricing information, which will help prevent the ruthless Jabbar Ali from taking as much of the profits as in the past. So, in this case, it looks like the CellBazaar technology can improve pricing for the benefit of the producer.
However, I am not sure how this would translate to the US economy. In this case, the producer suffered from a lack of information. I think that an equivalent producer in the US would have this information, and is probably already using that information in price negotiations. I think that mobile price information and shopping exist to a certain extent using mobile versions of Paypal, Craigslist, BoA online banking, etc; however, I am sure that we can learn more from the CellBazaar case.
Thanks for the interesting post!
September 22nd, 2009 at 12:41 am
I agree with the post completely. Today the cell bazaar is one of the widely growing industries. I am also a big user of cell. I am on the phone whole the day. I felt I am addicted of it. I can’t imagine my life without cell at all.
September 22nd, 2009 at 6:08 am
I completely agree with this article because today lot of people are using cellphones as their basic necessity and it helps in the daily life of every people. Due to cell phone we can connect anywhere in the world while we are roaming…Overall it’s an useful device……