Tag: retail apps

This trend is heading around the world as Diwali shopping in India broke mobile records.

While the holiday shopping season is only just getting started in the United States, India has already had a major wave of its own m-commerce season as Diwali brought a tremendous number of shoppers to their device screens to pick up that perfect gift.

According to UCWeb, the holiday shopping traffic across India broke the 75.5 percent mark this year.

UCWeb is the company behind the top mobile browser used in India, as it holds onto a market share that is greater than 54 percent in that country. This makes that company uniquely able to understand the increases that are being seen in m-commerce activities throughout the year and at times of holiday shopping such as during Diwali.

According to the company’s managing director in India, Kenny Ye, “The numbers of users who visit Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal via UC Browser in the month leading up to Diwali 2015 increased over 75 percent compared with last year.”

People in India are steadily increasing their use of m-commerce, particularly during festive seasons.

Ye went on to explain that consumers in India are “embracing shopping on the go” to a growing degree. They are finding that there is a great deal of opportunity available to take advantage of the time they have while they commute or on lunch breaks, for example, in order to pick up the gifts they need for festive celebrations. It helps them to save time and to be able to find some great ways to save money on what they want to buy.

That said, this use of mobile commerce for Diwali in India has been met with some resistance in that many people are saying that it is pushing people to think of this important time on the calendar in an exclusively commercial sense, when it is supposed to mean a great deal more.

This closely mirrors the sentiment of many people who will be using m-commerce to help them to get ahead in their Christmas shopping during the holiday season in the United States. It will be interesting to see what other trends follow the same paths between the two countries and their top gift giving holidays.

This, according to the results of a recent study that was conducted by Synchrony Financial.

Consumer financial services firm, Synchrony Financial has released the results of its 2015 Digital Study that underscores the importance of mobile shopping strategies for retailers that want to boost their customer experience and engage their shoppers.

The survey was held throughout March and April of this year, with the participation of 7,000 of the firm’s customers.

The customers were selected at random from throughout the country. The purpose was to build a better understanding of the way in which customers view mobile shopping in the retail experience, and what they expect from the offerings over their smartphones and tablets. There were a number of key findings that identified some important trends to retailers that will be keeping a focus on the tech expectations of consumers.

Among the primary findings of the study was that nearly 50 percent of respondents use mobile shopping.

Nearly one third of the survey participants will purchase a product after having seen it on social media. Moreover, it was also pointed out that about the same number of respondents to the survey said that the receipt of offers via text would push them to make an incremental shopping visit. Additional value offers, such as loyalty programs, free shipping, and personalized offers also proved to continue to be important to the people who completed this survey.

The report indicated that consumers are using mobile technology to an increasing degree. Adoption of m-commerce has been rising among central segments of the population. Of all of the study’s respondents, 45 percent said that at some point this year, they had already used a smartphone or tablet in order to complete a task that is related to shopping, such as reading or leaving reviews, researching a product, brand or store, sharing information over social media, or actually making a purchase. This represented an increase of 4 percent over the figure from 2014. When compared to 2013, it represented an increase of 9 percent.

As mobile shopping habits continue to be an increasingly important trend among all mobile devices and all age groups of shoppers, the report showed that retail habits are also continuing to change.