Tag: christmas shopping

Sales almost doubled over the holiday shopping season in 2014, when compared to the year before.

According to E-bit, a Brazilian e-commerce consultancy, sales that were made over mobile commerce in the country, during the Christmas shopping season, almost doubled in 2014 when compared to the figures that were produced during that same span of time in 2013.

From November 15 through December 24, there was an increase of 96 percent in m-commerce purchases.

The purchases made over mobile commerce represented 8.8 percent of the total online sales that were experienced in the country. Comparatively, in 2013, smartphone and tablet based shopping made up only 4.5 percent of the total online sales, during the same period of time. When it came to revenue, m-commerce also made up 8.8 percent of the total during the holiday shopping period. This represented an increase of 82 percent over the figure generated by the firm in 2013.

A considerable part of the growth in Brazil’s mobile commerce figures were the result of Black Friday’s sales.

E-bit reported that on that one day alone, there was a growth of 609 percent over m-commerce, when compared to Black Friday in 2013. The director of the firm, Pedro Guasti, said that “The share of mobile devices in virtual shopping is already nearing 9%. New entrants – those with no Internet access, as well as those with access from computers – are now migrating to smartphones and tablets”

Among the main drivers of the use of mobile devices for shopping purposes has been their rapid and growing penetration throughout the country. As more consumers own smartphones and tablets, it has caused the amount of marketing and selling targeting consumers using those gadgets to rise considerably. This was made clear, recently, by the panel at the São Paulo based Mobile+ Forum.

Equally, the instability of the broadband connections in Brazil have the potential to frustrate possible customers and have, according to the forum’s panelists, led shoppers to abandon their shopping carts before their transactions are complete. This will clearly be an important hurdle for mobile commerce to overcome if it is to continue it staggering growth rate in the country.

Whether retailers are ready or not, smartphone is going to have a considerable impact on consumers.

As is the case every year, holiday shoppers in 2014 will be looking to find the very best deals, and mobile commerce will be playing a very important part in that, regardless of whether or not the actual purchase is made over smartphones and tablets.

A growing number of pre-holiday survey results are starting to be released and they show that consumers want m-commerce.

One of the top consumer desires has been shown to be the ability to use their devices in order to price products and look for deals. Mobile commerce is more than simply making an online purchase through the use of a smartphone or tablet. According to a Google Consumer Surveys study that was conducted on behalf of Thinknear and that involved the participation of 1,000 adults in the United States, one in every three holiday shoppers plans to use a their devices to check prices.

Even before a shopper leaves his or her home to hit the stores, mobile commerce will play an important role.

The recent survey showed the following activities for which consumers expect to use their mobile devices during the upcoming holiday shopping season:

• Price comparisons (32 percent)
• Researching ideas for gifts (31 percent)
• Reading product reviews (27 percent)
• Looking for deals such as sales and coupons (25 percent)
• Creating a shopping list (22 percent)

These are very interesting statistics and reflect the type of behavior among consumers that retailers are going to want to take very seriously if they want to be able to get the most out of the holiday shopping season.

These results also reflect those that were revealed within the American Express Spending and Savings Tracker study that had been conducted by Ebiquity. Within that research, it was shown that the leading activities to be expected in online and mobile commerce during the holidays will be price comparisons, checking out ideas for gifts, and locating the best deals. These studies showed that these activities may be conducted before leaving to shop, or could occur while in store.