Smartphone and tablet based shopping in the American market are rapidly taking off.
According to the latest statistics that have been released by Forrester Research, the sales generated over the m-commerce channel is expected to reach a total of $114 billion by the close of this year.
This will be greatly driven by the rapid rise of tablet ownership among American consumers.
The forecasts made by Forrester Research have predicted that consumers that shop over m-commerce will boost their purchases by $38 billion this year, with an additional $76 billion coming from tablet commerce – to reach the anticipated total of $114 billion. This is a notable rise over what had been predicted last year, when Forrester had believed that sales over smartphones would reach $24 billion and those over tablets would break the $48 billion mark.
It is believed that m-commerce is increasing at this rate due to the fast adoption of the devices.
The analyst from Forrester behind the report, Sucharita Mulpuru, has said that as consumers adopt smartphones and tablets more rapidly, they are also shopping over those devices at a greater rate. The comfort level that Americans have shown with respect to using their gadgets for shopping purposes is steadily on the grow. Moreover, merchants are working ever harder to improve the experience that they have to offer over this channel.
Equally, Mulpuru also pointed out that it remains only a minority of consumers who have these devices that actually use them for making purchases. She stated in the report that “In fact, we estimate that only 38% of smartphone owners and 31% of tablet owners will purchase on those devices in 2014.”
The report also added that they anticipate a growth of 55 percent in m-commerce, and a rise of 61 percent for shopping over tablets by the year 2018. By that year, Mulpur u has estimated that the sales over all mobile devices will have crossed the $293 billion mark. Comparatively, she stated that the total American ecommerce sales will have risen from having been $294 billion, this year to reach $414 billion by the end of the year 2018.
Forecasters had previously predicted that shopping over smartphones would cut back on in-person purchases.
As mobile commerce continues to become increasingly popular among retailers and consumers, alike many forecasters had expected that this would start to negatively impact the amount of shopping that would be occurring in brick and mortar store locations, but recent data is showing that this is not the case.
Many store owners were becoming afraid that mcommerce might have represented their demise.
That said, despite the fact that mobile commerce is growing ever stronger, it is online shopping as a whole that poses the real threat to in-person shopping. A new Gallup poll has indicated that purchasing over smartphones and tablets hasn’t had any real impact on the buying habits at brick and mortar locations, when it comes to the majority of consumers in the United States. In fact, most people who took part in the poll stated that there has been no change in the shopping that they do within actual retail store locations.
This indicates that the growth of mobile commerce is occurring specifically within the online space.
Among the respondents, 59 percent said that they have not altered their retail store shopping. An additional 22 percent said that they shop in-person more often now, because of their smartphones and tablets. That said, 19 percent said that they are shopping less frequently at retail store locations.
As e-commerce becomes stronger, retailers with brick and mortar locations have found that they are experiencing an increasing level of challenges. This is partially due to the fact that their online competition – particularly giants such as Amazon – have notably lower overhead costs, simply due to the very nature of what they are. This can, according to officials from Gallup, allow those online stores to offer the exact same products at meaningfully lower prices.
Another poll that was conducted by Gallup during the holiday shopping season identified “showrooming” as a potential threat, as consumers have a look at a product in a retail store and then compare prices on their smartphones and purchase it over mobile commerce for the lowest cost. That said, as of yet, retailers seem to be embracing the power of mobile marketing and mcommerce and don’t seem to be experiencing any harm from its existence and popularity.
