Alipay, the Alibaba smartphone payments arm, released a report to describe these digital shopping trends.
In China, the trend in mobile commerce has been a rapid growth this year, according to a report that was released by the smartphone based payments branch of Alibaba, Alipay.
The report detailed the way in which the less developed western region of China has driven mobile shopping.
The Alipay report showed that over half of the online transactions that occurred at Alibaba over the first ten months of the year occurred over mobile commerce. In fact, mobile phones were responsible for 54 percent of the online transactions using Alipay from January through the end of October. Comparatively, throughout all of last year, it had represented a much lower 22 percent of total online payments volume for purchases made online through the service.
The western, inland parts of China are easily the fastest growing areas being seen for mobile commerce.
The Tibet autonomous region, the Ningxia Hui autonomous region, and the province of Shaanxi were identified as the areas where mobile commerce was taking off most rapidly, at 62.2 percent, 58.3 percent, and 59.6 percent, respectively. Those areas are quite remote and lack a solid infrastructure of broadband internet service. Desktop and laptop computers are also still quite expensive there, making them less appealing than the far more affordable smartphone.
On the other hand, Guangdong province and the cities of Shanghai and Beijing, all well developed areas, saw growth of a much lower 27, 24, and 29 percent during that same period of time when it came to mobile shopping transactions.
According to expert in online shopping and the vice president of greater China for hybris AG (the enterprise software provider division of SAP AG software giant, based in Germany), Burghardt Groeber, who commented on this mobile commerce trend, “As mobile penetration in rural China far outpaces fixed-line Internet penetration and with continued upgrades to mobile network connectivity and the popularity of new devices, it is natural that consumers are rapidly taking up mobile shopping.” In China m-commerce is expected to reach $162 billion by the close of 2017.
BWild |
December 10, 2014
Even though consumers continue to worry that their private data is not entirely safe, they’re still shopping on smartphones.
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) has released the result of a recent study and data analysis that has revealed that there is a growing number of people who are looking to mobile commerce as a part of their overall shopping process, regardless of the fact that worries about privacy remain high.
The research showed that 7 out of 10 people will use their smartphones for information while shopping.
While not all of those activities involve actually making a purchase, these mobile commerce behaviors remain quite important to the process that will eventually lead consumers to a purchase decision. For instance, the CEA found that about 70 percent of mobile device using shoppers will conduct an internet search using that smartphone in order to learn more information about a product while shopping.
Over half of shoppers were found to have preferred mobile commerce for learning about products while shopping.
That 58 percent said that looking something up on a smartphone or tablet was preferable to speaking to an employee while in store. This was particularly true among male shoppers as well as among those between the ages of 25 and 44.
The CES report also pointed out that even though consumers were using m-commerce tools despite the fact that about 61 percent of them also expressed concerns about privacy, and 58 percent were worried about security when using their smartphones while they shopped inside a brick and mortar store.
The CEA directory of industry and analysis, Steve Koenig, said that “Quick and reliable access to product information, availability and comparisons are the driving forces behind this trend.” He also added that “Mobile is undoubtedly changing the way consumers shop, but also likely redefining the role of salespeople at retail.”
The report, entitled “Managing the Consumerization of IT: Mobile Access for the BYOD World,” showed the following additional key mobile commerce usage findings:
• 70 percent of consumers use smartphones to find product information as they shop.
• 69 percent use their devices for a general search online while shopping.
• 52 percent would visit a website specific to the store while shopping.
• 47 percent would visit an app specific to the store while they shopped.
• 46 percent would visit a website specific to a manufacturer while shopping.
