Tag: m-commerce trends

Moms with young children are important m-commerce shoppers

Much of the future of smartphone based shopping may be designed to cater to this demographic.

The growing number of highly convenient options that are available through m-commerce are starting to become exceptionally appealing to moms, particularly those with very young children and who are struggling to keep up with a hectic schedule.

Retailers that are especially focused on that demographic are starting to make changes to appeal to them.

Among those retailers is Diapers.com. They are currently changing the way that they do business in order to cater to the new m-commerce environment that has become highly popular among their top demographic – moms with babies and toddlers. These retailers are discovering that moms have their smartphones with them no matter where they are and those devices are becoming their go-to option to investigate products, find pictures of rashes to try to identify what is on their baby’s skin, or watching videos to help them to get a cloth diaper technique down-pat.

They are texting pictures to proud grandparents and are using m-commerce to do their shopping.

m-commerce shoppers - momsThis has led not only to the convenience of being able to order whatever products they discover that they need, whenever they need it, but research has also shown that when they are overtired, they are also making some rather interesting impulse purchases.

According to the Diapers.com senior vice president of marketing and business development, Michal Geller, “Moms send us stories all the time of nursing her baby at 3 a.m., realizing she’s almost out of diapers or some other essential, placing an order with us through our app, and having the package show up at her door later that day.” Geller added that “Same-day delivery is a game-changer for busy moms,” which is supported by research that has indicated that the diaper market, all on its own, will reach $52 billion worldwide over the next two years.

Though the majority of consumers enjoy taking on mobile shopping at a slower, gradual pace, moms have already established themselves as a considerable demographic that are using this channel on a regular basis to research their purchases, and often to make them, as well.

TechCrunch numbers suggested that m-commerce made up only 1 percent of the complete retail market space in the United States, last year. That said, about half of all Diapers.com purchases were made from smartphones or tablets. That, according to Geller, represents a spike of 25 percent over 2013.

M-commerce in China expanded by 168 percent in the first quarter

This massive market is still seeing smartphone based shopping growth at an exponential rate.

The m-commerce market in China has seen a tremendous growth throughout the first quarter of this year, according to the figures that have been released in a report by a company called iResearch, which is based in Beijing.

The report indicated that in Q1 of this year, there was an increase in mobile shopping by 168 percent.

This brought the Chinese m-commerce market up to an estimated $59 billion. The growth rate in that market was tremendously greater than the overall mobile shopping increase seen globally, which was a very healthy 45 percent. The iResearch figures were based on measurements of the gross merchandise volumes (GMV). The prediction that was made based on the data is that there will have been a continued rapid growth throughout Q2 2015.

M-commerce purchases made up almost half of all online shopping that occurred in China during Q1.

M-commerce - Chinese FlagThe amount of online shopping that occurred over mobile devices more than doubled from what it had been during the same quarter last year, when it had been a much lower 22 percent. The data from last year’s fourth quarter showed that the GMV was peaking at $61.25 billion, after which, the figures dropped by 4.7 percent in the following quarter.

It was pointed out by iResearch that online shoppers in China have been increasingly embracing researching products and making purchases over their smartphones and tablets, and that growth of traffic over PCs has started slowing down.

The largest contributor to mobile GMV was Taobao Wireless (which is owned by Alibaba), but even that share fell from having been 87.4 percent in the first quarter of 2014 to be 84.5 percent in the same quarter, this year. The reason is that competitors are starting to gain some meaningful share. These include companies such as Vip and JD.com. Vip is now up to 2.8 percent while JD.com has increased to 5.2 percent (after it was at 3.3 percent, last year)

According to iResearch, this m-commerce competition has become increasingly intense, as each of the major participants battle to be able to grab hold of a greater share through new efforts and initiatives.