The fact that we all have technology at our fingertips has caused a disintermediation within traditional commerce, and significant disruption for retailers big and small. Consider the impact of Netflix on Blockbuster and local video stores, or how Amazon upended book buying. What we know for sure is that innovation, and the speed at which a business is able to innovate, is no longer an option. Rather, it is paramount to survival.

In the next decade, we’ll see more change in the commerce landscape than in the past 100 years combined.The reason? Four mega trends being driven by consumers are dramatically changing buying and selling habits as we know them. Merchants of all types—from brick-and-mortar retail outlets to non-profits, to manufacturers and even those selling online, need to ensure they’re keeping pace or risk going the way of Blockbuster, Borders and the dinosaurs.

Mobile

Smartphone sales are on such an aggressive upward trajectory that some estimates suggest there will be up to 50 billion connected devices (beyond just smartphones) by 2020 and each consumer will have approximately seven devices connected to the Internet. Beyond just making phone calls or sending text messages, people regularly look up directions, research products while in-store, chat and compare with friends and family, search for deals and even pay for their morning coffee with their mobile phone.

These intelligent, always-connected devices and the consumers using them to their full potential are pushing merchants to react quickly, or die. Businesses that don’t have a mobile commerce strategy are losing out on significant revenue, and that’s only going to continue to accelerate.

Local

Not long ago the most impressive features of online shopping were the ability to find out which stores were located in your neighborhood and determine which might have your item in.

Now, there’s an app for that!  By leveraging inventory sharing and local mapping, buyers can now access real-time inventory data while on the go, browse through sales and deals tailored to their individual preferences and even get suggestions based on things like frequently visited restaurants, clubs, hotels and more. This is powerful stuff.

The merging of mobile and local is also leading to the creation of entirely new business models and opportunities for merchants and consumers alike. A great example is that people are now able to get paid for snapping photos while out and about in their cities. How cool is that?

If you’re not taking full advantage of the ability to reach customers based on stated preferences and proximity, you’ve already fallen behind.

Social

Commerce is an inherently social endeavor. Not long ago, a customer would try on a sweater while in-store and ask her friends for feedback before purchasing. Today that same customer can just as easily try on the sweater, snap a photo of herself wearing it, share it on her social network of choice and get a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ within minutes from multiple friends in various locations. There are apps that will share what a person’s friends have purchased on social sites or allow users to share local recommendations with one another.

The explosion of consumer interest in social networks has spawned the so-called social commerce opportunity. In fact, transacting within social networks is predicted to go from a billion opportunity in 2011 to a billion opportunity by 2015.

The challenge for merchants? How to effectively leverage a customers’ social graph to build an additional commerce channel within the social networks themselves. We’re beginning to see early signs of this with some of the group gifting apps and the ‘social shopping mall’ concept that allows sellers to offer their products directly to hundreds of millions of Facebook users.

Digital

Digital has changed everything—including how we use and think about currency. People now have the ability to bump phones together to pay off a friendly wager, order and pay for a meal entirely via a mobile device and transfer paper checks into their account by snapping a photo with their mobile phone.

Similar changes are occurring in-store. Consumers can pick up an item off the shelf, scan the barcode using their mobile phone and immediately find out if the same item is available online or down the street for a lower price.

The digital revolution is here, it’s real and it has leveled the playing field for both buyers and sellers of all shapes and sizes.

The Future

As the mobile, local, social and digital trends drive our lifestyles, the pace of innovation will determine which businesses will go boom or bust. At the end of the day, merchants want to return to the business of being merchants. They want to find the best things to sell to consumers and they want to create the best shopping experience a consumer can have. Those that are nimble and seek to adapt quickly to emerging consumer behaviors will not only survive, but thrive. One thing is for sure—the future will look nothing like the past.

What do you think commerce will look like in 5-10 years?

Matthew Mengerink is vice president and general manager of X.commerce, the first end-to-end, multi-channel commerce technology platform designed for all the ways consumers choose to shop today. Matthew leads the integrated open commerce platform group and is responsible for ensuring that eBay Inc. builds a strong, robust developer community across the eBay, PayPal and GSI technology platforms to amplify merchants’ businesses.

To hear more about mobile payments, check out our GigaOM Mobilize conference Sept. 26 and 27 in San Francisco.

Image courtesy of Flickr user Johan Larsson.

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Technology is helping cut transaction costs in many domains. Want to rent a movie? Forget the old days of driving 10 minutes to Blockbuster and spending 30 minutes arguing with your significant other about popcorn flick versus art house. Netflix will have a few hours entertainment downloaded in a matter of minutes and even help the indecisive with suggestions.

But is what’s true for procuring movies soon to be true for procuring services as well? Start-up Zaarly hopes so. The app aims to bring local buyers and sellers of both goods and services together easily, taking the hassle out of errands and odd jobs. Where once you might have cruised Craigslist or called around to friends to find a man with a van or an Ikea assembly genius, now you pop your request and what you’re willing to pay onto Zaarly and local folks bid for the job and fulfill your request without stress.

That’s the theory at least, but three months after the app’s launch what’s going on in practice? What sorts of people are actually fulfilling requests on the service? And is the auction-style format as empowering for sellers as for buyers? We talked to three users to get their on-the-ground perspective.

The student

Zaarly is very focused on wooing the student market, and for obvious reasons: college kids are often strapped for cash but have time to burn, the perfect candidates to run “Zaarlies” as they’re known. The company set up “Campus CEOs” to promote the product, tapping Marquette University (alma mater of co-founder Eric Koester) student Joe Scannell to lead the effort on his campus.

He’s used the product both as a buyer and seller — finding used furniture and earning a bit of extra cash proofreading papers — and thinks the app is a great fit for students. “The unfamiliarity factor is big,” but once they overcome their initial hesitation, Scannell says his peers are embracing the idea.

“Craigslist is stuck in the ‘90s,” he says, explaining the advantages of the app, and he also notes that, at least within the hyper-local setting of a campus, Zaarly also serves as a community-builder. “You’re meeting people you never would have met before.”

The young entrepreneur

For Zachary Tombley, known as “Sir Aaron” to users of the app in Kansas City, Zaarly is less about community and more about cold hard cash. As an entrepreneur who had previously set up a company he describes as a mobile butler service, Zaarly seemed like a good way to find new customers.

The app also serves as a good way for Tombley to find his feet as an entrepreneur. He views his work on Zaarly as a “baby business” and envisions it as a training ground of sorts: “I’m going to start it, run it, make my mistakes, see how you can burn money and make money and then pass it on to another young entrepreneur.”

He has had some struggles with Zaarly, however. The lack of any sort of “verified” badge or reputation points for top users causes some problems for Tombley who feels that as a prolific Zaarlier he doesn’t benefit enough from his (relatively) long and successful track record fulfilling requests. The inability to sort requests for services from those for goods also means time wasted digging out the right jobs for his business.

The nebulous newness of the service also has its drawbacks. “Zaarly is really focusing on letting the customer develop what Zaarly means, which is good,” says Tombley. “But it’s very new and it’s going to be new until someone is like ‘this is what it is for.’ I like that because you’re going to get the more outrageous things on Zaarly, but TaskRabbit is more of what I already had my company set up for,” though he notes competitor TaskRabbit isn’t available in his city yet.

The creative freelancer

San Francisco-based student and DJ Peter Clarke sees another possible user base for Zaarly among freelance professionals with specific skills looking to fill holes in their schedule and supplement their income.

DJs are “looking on Zaarly every now and then,” he says. “I’ve seen a few requests where people are, like, ‘hey, I’m throwing a party for my business and we’ll pay you a few hundred bucks to come DJ for it.’” Other professionals are also in demand on Zaarly. Clarke has also seen requests for logo designs on the app, for instance.

“If you’ve got nothing else going on you can go and look,” says Clarke. “It’s a great extra little area for you to go out and seek work if things are going kind of slow.”

Do you think apps like Zaarly are as good for sellers as they are for buyers?

Image courtesy of Flickr user Iamjohntmeyer, CC 2.0.

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