As the number of Americans with smartphones passes the halfway mark this year, retailers have an opportunity to directly engage with their customers and go on the offensive against “Showrooming,” a trend in which consumers use their smartphones in a store to scan the barcodes of products to find better deals on Amazon or at a nearby competitor’s location. It is clear that retailers must go on the offensive against showrooming and find new ways to market to consumers and harness the power of mobile phones.

With the introduction of the iPhone and the rapid evolution of smartphones and tablets, users could access the web wherever they were. They also became consistently accessible, with most mobile device owners becoming so attached to the technology that they never had it far from them and they never turned it off.  By far the biggest single piece of new information that is available from consumers’ mobile devices is the accurate location of the device, powered by the onboard GPS that has become a hallmark of all modern smartphones.