My partner Paula Rosenblum and I are getting ready to launch our annual survey on the state of Mobile in Retail. Funny thing is though, as mobile becomes less of a “thing ” and more of just an integral part of daily life – for both shoppers and retail workers – how do we carve out a line of questions that aren’t already covered in our annual Store and eCommerce Reports?

Last year, we learned that retailers see mobile as an opportunity that extends far more to their consumers than they do their own efforts to help “be there ” with them. In fact, virtually all of the ways they can help to balance the stakes are secondary to the advantages of mobile for consumers. So there’s that – which we’ll definitely want to dive into deeper this year.

And at the same time, far fewer retailers are concerned about “confusion in the marketplace about what makes a successful strategy, ” but their budget constraints around new mobile technology rollouts are increasing. These two phenomena combine with a third, providing the makings for a perfect storm: there is vast distance between retailers’ understanding of the value of many of today’s technical solutions and actual use – even though many of those technologies have been available for quite some time.

So we know we’ll want to dive into the evolution of mobile technologies, both in their perceived value and their actual use. That alone could make for an interesting update (year-over-year analysis always does). But we’d like to take it a step further. What are we missing?

So far, we know we’d like to incorporate more questions about data security – particularly in relationship to in-store tracking and mobile payment technologies. We no longer conduct an annual data security survey, so this seems the perfect spot to scratch that itch. And we’re already thinking we’d like to know more about retailers overall mobility strategy (and whether mobile channels are best suited for unique treatment, or whether they really are supposed to provide the exact same shopping experience as other devices)… But what else? What would YOU like to know?

Think of this as an open invitation that – if you had a whole host of retailers in one room – you’d most like to hear them answer!