Mobile commerce report shows increase in mobile app use
By now, it is no secret that mobile commerce had a strong showing during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping weekend. A multitude of retailers put intense focus on mobile consumers this year in the hopes of engaging these people in various mobile commerce platforms. Onavo, a mobile data compression firm, has released information concerning which of these platforms performed the best during the shopping weekend. The company tracked the performance of these platforms that were put to use by some of the largest retailers in the world.
Report shows Best Buy saw greatest increase in mobile commerce traffic this year
According to Onavo, Groupon remained the most used mobile commerce application during the holiday shopping weekend. Best Buy, however, saw the largest increase in overall commerce on Black Friday. Use of the company’s mobile commerce application shot up by almost 600% on a single day. The Best Buy application was followed closely by one from Wal-Mart. A mobile commerce application from Kohl’s saw an increase in use of over 300% on the same day.
Report accounts for iOS platform only
Notably, Onavo’s report accounts only for iPhone users, thus physical payments made with a mobile device are not represented. The Android platform is currently the only mainstream mobile operating system that supports NFC technology, which facilitates mobile payments for physical products. The report also does not account for the mobile commerce activity that came from consumers with Android devices. These consumers are estimated to have accounted for a major portion of overall mobile commerce activity during the holiday shopping weekend.
Consumers continue to become more comfortable with mobile commerce
Mobile commerce continues to grow in popularity amongst consumers. Retailers have been working to raise the awareness of mobile commerce for several months, hoping to engage a relatively new audience of tech-savvy consumers. These efforts seem to have paid off and may have established a foundation upon which retailers can build more engaging mobile commerce venture for the future.
eBay has experienced a very promising beginning to the holiday shopping season this year. The online retail giant has released data concerning mobile sales that were made over the Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend. This data comes from eBay itself, as well as its Marketplaces, PayPal, and GSI Commerce divisions. The company will not be providing overall sales information this year, but its mobile sales have been made publicly available, showing a strong performance for the company’s various mobile commerce initiatives.
Mobile sales up across the board
According to eBay, the company saw a 133% increase in mobile transactions in the U.S. on Thanksgiving day from what they had been in 2011. The company also saw a 153% increase in mobile volume on Black Friday over the levels it had been last year. PayPal experienced a 173% increase in global mobile payment volume on Thanksgiving day and a 193^ increase in global mobile payment volume on Black Friday. GSI Commerce experienced similar results.
Positive performance largely due to focus on mobile consumers
eBay notes that much of the success it has seen in the mobile commerce realm comes from the company’s increased focus on mobile consumers. eBay has been positioning itself to engage these consumers in an aggressive way, well before the holiday season even began. The company predicts that mobile commerce and similar services will shape this year’s holiday shopping season and any companies not focused on appealing to mobile consumers could miss out on an ideal opportunity.
Mobile commerce becoming more popular in wake of holiday shopping
There is still a lot of time left in the 2012 holiday season and eBay expects to continue seeing positive results from its mobile commerce initiatives. Other retailers have been reporting similar results from their own focus on mobile commerce. The performance of these ventures is expected to boost the popularity of mobile commerce within the retail industry, encouraging more companies to adopt platforms that allow consumers to pay for products with their mobile devices.
