Tag: smartphone shopping

Still, shoppers in the millennial generation have yet to be sold on the concept and aren’t yet buying into it.

Social media has been playing an ever growing role in mobile commerce trends when it comes to its impact on consumers as a whole, but when looking at specific demographics, it becomes rapidly clear that millennials aren’t yet all that impressed with what smartphone based shopping has to offer through social platforms.

When it comes to the drivers behind the growth of m-commerce, social media has been highly important.

Brands have been sending a considerable portion of their marketing budgets toward branded content, native advertising and overhauling their mobile apps to improve the experience of shoppers who are continually on the go. That said, there is a considerable difference in the impact of these mobile commerce trends on millennials than there is on shoppers from other age groups. This appears to suggest that the way that millennials want to interact with a brand and the way brands expect them to want to interact with them has not entirely aligned.

Millennial mobile commerce trends show that brands and individuals appear to have different expectations.

The disconnect appears to lie in the place that millennials actually engage with m-commerce. According to recent data from BI Intelligence, consumers in that age group will use those platforms for researching products and services. This appears to be a strong preference over making a purchase through a mobile app.

The BI Intelligence GlobalWebIndex study has indicated that shoppers in the millennial generation will use Twitter, Facebook and other social media outlets for looking into products before making a purchase. However, they do not actually make those purchases over mobile commerce channels.

The mobile commerce trends revealed by the study include the estimate that 40 percent of global consumers between the ages of 16 and 24 years old are looking into products via social media. That said, 30 percent of the general population are doing so. Social media is not behaving as a direct product purchasing referral but is instead providing a means through which consumers can educate themselves. Brands that want to encourage purchasing may not find that millennial shoppers are buying through the same platforms they use for their product research, but they will still need to maintain a solid presence over those channels if they want to appeal to those consumers, with Facebook providing the most important influence over shopper decision making.

Report finds more consumers than expected turn to their mobile devices to handle the bulk of their shopping activity.

According to a fourth-quarter 2015 Mobile Wallet Report from Nielsen, 37 percent of participants said their purchases begin with mobile commerce over one-quarter to half of the time. Considering many American’s own smartphones and these devices have become an important part of their daily lives – functioning as a constant companion and information resource – it only makes sense that most people who own these devices would use them as a research tool prior to making a purchase. That said, consumers don’t limit their mobile shopping practices to only smartphones.

The report found that there are many tablet shoppers as well.

The results of the study revealed that 72 percent of mobile shoppers research an item on their smartphones before buying. What’s more, 70 percent check the price of an item and 60 percent use a store locator to find the store where they can purchase the product that they want.

However, the report also discovered that consumers rely on tablet commerce, too. While not used nearly as frequently as smartphones for locating a store (a mere 31 percent to the smartphone’s 60 percent), when it comes to researching an item before purchasing it, 66 percent of respondents said that they used tablets, with 57 percent using tablets for checking the price of an item.

Yet, interestingly, when it comes to making an actual purchase via a mobile device, more respondents made purchases via their tablets than smartphones. For instance, 28 percent of participants purchased a service via their tablet compared to 21 percent of participants who used their smartphone.

When engaging in mobile commerce, certain factors are important to the consumer’s experience.

Nielsen’s report also examined “Factors that are important when shopping on mobile Q4 2015” and – not surprising – found that 62 percent of mobile consumer who took part in the study want a highly visual experience and want to be able to view product pictures above all else when using their smartphone for shopping. Shoppers (48 percent of respondents) also want mobile-friendly websites, while 44 percent of participants said that it was also very important for there to be a product description.

Based on these findings, it’s clear that the mobile commerce trend is growing; giving marketers and advertisers who want to reach their desired target market, new opportunities to do so.