A growing number of shoppers are using smartphones to buy products they want during the holiday season.
According to Google, a rising number of consumers are choosing to skip the long Black Friday marathon shopping experiences for small bursts of mobile commerce purchasing through the use of their smartphones.
These m-commerce purchases occur in scattered moments over time instead of all at once as is the Black Friday tradition.
Google has labeled these little bursts of mobile commerce shopping as “micro-moments”. In its blog, the company predicted that “This holiday season, shopping ‘moments’ will replace shopping ‘marathons,’.”
Approximately 54 percent of shoppers who will be making purchases this holiday season have said that they plan to do some of their shopping on their smartphones during periods of free time, such as while they are eating breakfast in the morning or during their daily commute, said Google. This data was generated through an analysis conducted between that company and Ipsos MediaCT from a consumer survey on their holiday season shopping behaviors.
The research showed that people would rather use mobile commerce and are less likely to take marathon in-person trips.
Last year, Google observed a steady increase in mobile shopping throughout the length of the holiday season and noted a decrease in the number of spikes on the traditionally preferred shopping days such as Black Friday morning.
The company explained in its blog that “This type of shopping has lead to shorter, more purposeful mobile shopping sessions.” It also went on to say that “In fact, while shoppers now spend 7% less time in each mobile session, smartphone’s share of online shopping purchases has gone up 64% over the last year, and 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones.”
Ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, approximately 61 percent of holiday shoppers will already begin researching the products that they are thinking about buying. That is an increase of 17 percent over last year, despite the fact that Thanksgiving fell very late in the season in 2014. That said, Google still pointed out that while shoppers may start researching early, most purchases will still happen later on in the holiday season.
Smartphones were the most popular mobile commerce platform for most consumers. Many favored iOS devices for their mobile shopping forays, but Android devices have been growing more popular for mobile commerce in recent months. The report shows that the majority of mobile sales came from consumers based in Atlanta, Georgia.