Tag: holiday shopping trends

According to the results of a recent study, more people mobile shopped over the holiday weekend than ever.

According to a recent study from the National Retail Federation, there were more people who used m-commerce over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend than has been the case in any previous year.

The online survey showed that online retail saw a considerable online shopping spike, particularly over mobile.

The research took into consideration the shopping habits of over 151 million people who said that they had shopped in stores, online or over m-commerce over that weekend launching the holiday shopping season. Many retailers took care to offer the same deals over their websites that they had to offer in store, allowing consumers to be able to make the purchases they wanted without having to wait in line in the actual shops. The survey itself was conducted on behalf of the federation by Prosper Insight & Analytics. It indicated that approximately 102 million people had said they shopped in store on the Thanksgiving weekend.

That said, even more – 103 million people – said they shopped online and over m-commerce channels.

The survey also showed that even by the close of the weekend, there were still 121 million people who had intended to shop online and over mobile commerce on Cyber Monday. While this is a significant number, it should be pointed out that it is actually a reduction when compared to the 126.9 million people that had intended to shop on Cyber Monday after having done so over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday long weekend.

According to figures reported by the Wall Street Journal, this year, consumers spent an estimated $4.45 billion over online and mobile commerce channels on Thursday and Friday, alone. Black Friday sales increased by 14 percent when compared to the figures from 2014, according to the data shared by Adobe Systems, Inc. That online and m-commerce figure is based on purchases made in about 4,500 locations across the United States. Adobe’s estimates were also that over half of online shopping occurred over smartphones, further underscoring the importance of mobile devices for retail shopping.

The results of the Wanderful Media annual survey showed that smartphone applications will be vital this season.

The 2015 Annual Holiday Shopping Survey results have now been released by Wanderful Media, the firm that produced the popular cash-back Find&Save shopping mobile apps for Android and iOS based smartphone users.

The insights provided by this study could be invaluable to merchants as they fine tune their holiday strategies.

Among the most important trends that were identified within this survey was that mobile apps would be playing a critical role in holiday shopping not only in general, but especially among shoppers in the millennial generation. In fact, among shoppers in that demographic, 92 percent said that they would be using their smartphones while shopping during the holiday season. Among the respondents as a whole, 73 percent of all holiday shoppers said they would be using those mobile devices as a part of their shopping journey.

Shoppers in all age categories plan to use mobile apps to shop this season, with specific purposes in mind.

The main reasons that shoppers in all age categories are looking to their smartphones in order to help them to get through their gift buying this holiday season include: discovering opportunities to save through digital coupons and promo codes for nearby stores; to find those store locations; and to compare the prices for the same product from one store to the next.

The survey also determined that smartphone apps that were the most popular tool for mobile commerce, especially because 78 percent of millennials said they would use applications for shopping purposes over the holiday season. Comparatively, 67 percent of overall shoppers in every age category said they would be using those tools for the same purpose. Over 80 percent of holiday shoppers who are millennials also said they would be interested in receiving push notifications from apps with regards to holiday sales that would be occurring from Black Friday through Christmas.

Aside from notifications from mobile apps, millennials also said they would be willing to sign up for other types of mobile alerts in order to stay on top of the latest deals as they become available. Among all age groups, 65 percent said they would be willing to sign up for that type of savings notification.