Tag: mobile commerce research

The rise of mobile shopping is changing the way consumers behave in the digital space

Consumer behavior is beginning to have a significant impact on digital commerce. Many consumers are becoming more mobile-centric, relying on their smartphones and tablets to research and purchase products that they are interested in. A recent report from Forrester Research shows that merchants may have to begin focusing more heavily on the mobile space as a result, as mobile commerce is becoming a very powerful force in the retail space, especially as more consumers become comfortable with the concept.

More consumers are beginning to use their devices in physical stores

According to the report from Forrester Research, 82% of consumers in the United States make purchasing decisions while in a physical store, with 56% of these consumers using their smartphones to check prices online. The report also shows that the capabilities of mobile devices are also changing consumer behavior. When in stores, more consumers are beginning to scan barcodes with their mobile devices in order to read reviews and compare prices. Consumers are also scanning codes to take advantage of special deals being offered by merchants.

Loyalty programs may help secure the growth of mobile shopping

Mobile commerce has become a very significant concept for the retail industry. One-third of all e-commerce transactions made throughout the world are now done via a mobile device. A recent report from Goldman Sachs predicts that mobile commerce will account for nearly half of all e-commerce transactions made worldwide by 2018. As this sector continues to grow, loyalty programs may become much more important to retailers than they already are. Approximately 46% of consumers are more willing to provide personal information if they can make use of a loyalty program of some sort.

Consumers are less likely to share personal information outside loyalty programs

While loyalty programs may provide merchants with more information about their customers, these people have limits when it comes to the information they want to provide. Outside of loyalty programs, consumers are less likely to share personal information. This is something that retailers will have to keep in mind once they begin focusing more heavily on the mobile commerce space in the future.

According to figures released by comScore, smartphones played a notably larger role in overall online shopping.

comScore has released its holiday shopping data and has revealed that m-commerce generated $12.7 billion in sales, while online shopping as a whole brought in a tremendous $69 billion.

These figures show that mobile commerce is growing fast but desktop shopping is growing slower than predicted.

This revealed that it really was m-commerce that was dominating the scene in terms of growth rate during the holiday season. This growth rate was considerably larger than that of PC based purchases. Moreover, it was also pointed out that regardless of whether or not a sale was made, the traffic that was seen on websites was greater on mobile devices than it was on desktops and laptops. Smartphone based shopping also rose rapidly from 2014 to 2015. In fact, comScore recorded the rate of growth during that span of time as being 59 percent.

This shows very rapid growth for m-commerce, though not as quick as what some had forecasted.

comScore recorded that the total e-commerce sales that occurred from November 1 through December 31, 2015 came to an estimated $69.08 billion. That research firm had previously predicted that the figure would have been closer to $70.01 billion during that span of time.

While mobile commerce did manage to exceed the forecast that comScore had put forward, desktop didn’t manage to do the same thing. Instead, it fell short of the predicted total by close to $2 billion. Once again, the largest single day for online shopping was on Cyber Monday, which fell on November 30, last year. On that one day, there were $2.3 billion in sales completed online.

That said, while there are a large number of analyses being released with regards to the totals in sales of e- and m-commerce, many analysts are saying that it is short-sighted to try to think of the sales as occurring either on one type of environment or another. Instead, many reports are starting to acknowledge that the line between online and offline sales, and the line between PC and mobile devices is quite blurred as consumers will often cross from one environment into another and, perhaps, back again before a final purchase is made.