Tag: smartphone shopping

This is a reflection of the increasing penetration of smartphones in the country, which is now at 60 percent.

As smartphone penetration in France is now estimated to have reached 60 percent, a rapidly growing number of people in the country are turning to mobile commerce as a part of their regular shopping activities.

This, according to a recent report from comScore, which indicated that since Q1, there are now 700,000 more smartphones.

With such as growing population of people who now have smartphones, it means that there is also a growing number of consumers who have the technology that they require to take part in mobile commerce. According to the comScore data, that is exactly what a tremendous number of French customers feel, as well. Merchants are reaching out to consumers over that channel, and those shoppers are often listening.

There are now 10 million consumers in France that use mobile commerce while in-store.

The comScore data indicated that while inside a retail store, many consumers are taking out their smartphones and are using mobile commerce behaviors to help them to make their decisions. For example, approximately 8.5 million people would phone or text a friend or family member in order to ask questions regarding a product that they are considering. Another 9.3 million people took pictures of items that they were thinking about and among them, 5.8 million sent them to family or friends.

Another 3.4 million consumers used barcodes to help them with their mobile commerce investigations, by using their devices to scan QR codes, for example, to learn more about a product or a brand.

It has been predicted that as the adoption of smartphones continues to expand, it could also reach the point that adoption of mobile commerce will move beyond that which is seen in other countries, such as the United States. This is because the daily routine of the average person in France includes a larger amount of shopping (such as for groceries) than the average American. Since the average person in the U.S. stocks up on food products only once every three weeks, there is a much lower opportunity for regular smartphone based shopping than in France, where the storage space isn’t available and groceries are purchased much more frequently.

According to a recent Shopgate report, retail needs to appeal to smartphone using consumers.

Shopgate, a highly recognized m-commerce business solution, has released a report called the “2013 Holiday Guide for Online Retailers”, which provided the top 10 recommendations for success, this holiday season.

Among those points, the focus on catering to smartphone users was a considerable one.

What was explained by Shopgate in its report was that retailers should start acting right away to make their way into m-commerce if they haven’t already prepared their strategy for the upcoming holiday shopping season. It is no longer enough to focus on online shopping in general and as a whole. Instead, a focus also needs to be placed specifically on the mobile channel.

In fact, when it came to getting into m-commerce, the recommendation was “do it now!”

The report from Shopgate pointed out that m-commerce traffic is not only already representing more than 20 percent of all American internet traffic, but it is also expected to exceed desktop based internet traffic by the end of next year. The holiday season is predicted to be the transitional time into that exceptional rate of growth to the point that it will be greater on smartphones and tablets than it is on laptops.

The report pointed to a number of m-commerce findings from several recent studies.

For example, it pointed out that shopping over m-commerce is expected to reach $42 billion by the end of this year, and that it will make up a larger segment of e-commerce than has ever been experienced before, according to eMarketer.

In fact, the report went to the extent of saying that retailers that choose not to take part in m-commerce may be actively choosing not to take advantage of an important source of revenue. It pointed to data from Econsultancy, which indicated that 62 percent of businesses that have created a website that is specifically optimized for smartphones and tablets, had increased their sales. The recommendation for the upcoming holiday season was to use mobile friendly elements such as: coupons, push notifications, ad scanners, daily deals, QR codes, mobile SEO, and product categories.