Tag: mobile spending

Mobile commerce could reach nearly half of all online spending

A recent forecast showed that it would reach $284 billion and 45 percent of e-shopping spending by 2020.

At the moment, consumers are using mobile commerce more than ever before to help to find products, read reviews and locate those items at brick and mortar retail locations.

That said, the current trend doesn’t show that the majority of consumers are making purchases over smartphones.

According to predictions that have been made about mobile commerce use throughout 2016, it doesn’t look as though there will be a massive change in smartphone shopping apps toward any that will be greatly superior to the current offerings. Still, m-commerce is expected to continue to represent a growing proportion of overall online spending over time. According to a new report, that will start to become quite meaningful by the year 2020.

In 2014, mobile commerce made up only 12 percent of all online sales in the United States.

Mobile Commerce Online SpendingThe total online spending last year had been $303 billion in the U.S. That said, according to the BI Intelligence Mobile Checkout Report, by 2020, that figure will be considerably greater. Consumers will be spending an estimated $632 billion online and 45 percent of that will have been through mobile channels.

While American adults do spent a notably larger amount of their screen time using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, when it comes to their actual spending, desktops and laptops are still the gadgets of choice. Moreover, digital commerce is growing at a rate that is larger than that of in-store retail. Retail sales grew by 2 percent year over year, but digital commerce rose by 15 percent, said data from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

While smartphone shopping has been growing in its importance, it is e-commerce as a whole that has had the largest impact on total retail sales. That said, the BI Intelligence report showed that between now and 2020, there will be a notable shift as mobile commerce starts to play a much more meaningful role in e-commerce sales. It is estimated that 2015’s total for mobile shopping is $55 billion (16 percent of total online shopping), by 2020 the same figure will be 45 percent of the total, at $248 billion.

American m-commerce is falling behind the worldwide trend

eMarketer has now released new data that has show that consumers in the U.S. aren’t keeping up with the globe.

Some of the latest data issued by eMarketer has revealed that American consumers purchased an estimated total of $48 billion of products and services over m-commerce channels throughout 2015.

That represents an increase of 32 percent when compared to the same time in 2014.

Throughout 2015, m-commerce shopping made up an estimated 22 percent of all online retail shopping, according to the eMarketer figures for the United States. That represents a rise of 3 percentage points over the same figure from 2014. While that does appear to be a strong figure, it also shows that mobile shopping is being used more broadly in other parts of the world. For example, in South Korea, 46 percent of all online retail sales were conducted over smartphones or tablets. That represented 5.1 percent of the whole retail sales total for 2015.

Similar m-commerce figures were seen in other parts of the world, showing that the U.S. is lagging behind.

M-Commerce News - US Consumers not keeping up with rest of the worldIn China, for example, 50 percent of all online shopping sales and nearly 8 percent of retail purchases occurred over smartphones and tablets throughout 2015, according to the estimates from eMarketer.

Comparatively, in the U.S., consumers continue to use their mobile devices primarily for informing themselves about products as opposed to actually making a purchase. In the United States, under 2 percent of total retail sales are conducted by smartphone or tablet. Moreover, even though there have been some major mobile payments players that have entered that market – such as Apple and Google – only 14 percent of Americans said they would be interested in purchasing something over their mobile devices during the holiday season, said statistics from Bankrate.

Even specifically among Millennials, the demographic most likely to use their smartphones for activities such as shopping, only 20 percent said they had intended to use m-commerce for holiday purchases either online or through wallet apps that would be used in a retail brick and mortar location. It remains clear that the United States is a market facing considerable barriers to mobile shopping.