For many owners of these and tablet devices, use is now a vital part of the buying experience.

The results of a new survey from Perception Research Services International has shown that 76 percent of smartphone owners will use mobile commerce in some way through a smartphone or tablet before they make a purchase of electrics, apparel, and grocery products.

The survey also discovered the specific reasons that these devices are used while shopping.

Smartphone and tablet owners use mobile commerce in a number of different ways as they debate buying various products. In fact, much of the influence from the devices is not for a direct purchase that is actually made online over the device. Instead, it is a part of the overall process from the point that the product is identified and onward.

Mobile commerce, therefore, plays a multichannel role in the road to buying one or several items.

Among the other mobile commerce discoveries that were made by the researchers include the following:

• 53 percent of smartphone owners compare prices through the use of the device.
• 49 percent of the survey’s respondents said that they use their devices to read customer reviews.
• 48 percent of these tablet and smartphone owners use the device to find coupons, sales, and other discount opportunities.
• 48 percent use the devices to seek out additional information about products.
• 37 percent head to a manufacturer’s site in order to obtain more product information.
• 34 percent use the device to seek out the opinion of a friend or family member.
• 31 percent actually make the product or service purchase through a mobile commerce site or app.
• 31 percent take part in a contest.
• 17 percent use the device to view a product demonstration.

The shopper research company, Perception Research Services International, looked into mobile commerce in order to help with merchandizing and packaging systems improvements. The survey involved the participation of 1,450 adults in the United States who were responsible for a minimum of half of the grocery shopping in their household. Among them, just over half (54 percent) owned a smartphone.

This year will make it much easier for consumers in Australia to make purchases using smartphones.

Telcos in Australia are giving a significant kick to their intentions to bring mobile payments to consumers throughout the country so that they will be able to use their smartphones or tablets to pay for products or services at a store’s checkout counter.

This could be the first step toward making credit cards obsolete within the country.

Although mobile payments are a move that has been in the works for several years and very little action has actually been seen until very recently. Even the most recent steps have not been enormous, and the term “contactless payments” remains unknown to the majority of consumers, even among those whose devices are capable of the transactions.

Though the contactless mobile payments concept has great potential, it has been failing to gain traction.

The idea behind mobile payments is quite simple. It involves using a smartphone or tablet that is either waved over an enabled reader at a point of sale in a store, or tapped against it. This automatically transfers the funds necessary for making the purchase from the user’s credit card or bank account, into the account of the store.

The primary barrier faced by this type of mobile payments is the fact that only a small percentage of smartphones are actually enabled with the necessary NFC technology (near field communication) that allow these transactions to occur. This was held back even further by the release of the iPhone 5 by Apple, which shocked the mobile world when those chips were notably absent.

Vodafone and Telstra believe that this year will mark a difference in this trend. They believe that with many more NFC technology enabled devices entering the marketplace, it will represent a brand new opportunity for mobile payments to take off.

According to Dr. Hugh Bradlow, the chief technology officer at Telstra, “It’s been promised for a long time, but by next year many devices on the market will incorporate near field communication.” He went on to explain that in the mobile payments marketplace, “NFC has been a slow burn, but it will likely become entrenched next year and we plan to be a big part of that.”