Mobile shopping behaviors are different from those on other channels

Consumers who use their smartphones for researching products and making purchases shop differently.

Consumers who regularly participate in mobile shopping have a tendency to prefer products with which they have already become familiar and that they purchase on a regular basis, according to American research.

The study was conducted by a team of researchers from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The research also determined that mobile shopping is considered to be a solid way for boosting consumer loyalty – also referred to as “stickiness” – among customers, especially when it comes to people who are purchasing in small volumes. The study discovered that this is because m-commerce encourages customers to purchase on a more frequent basis and to boost the size of the orders they place. The study was held by marketing PhD candidate Jen-Hui Wang from the Kellogg School, as well as marketing professor from the same school, Lakshman Krishnamurthi, as well as Edward Malthouse from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern.

This research was conducted by analyzing online and mobile shopping data from 13 American locations.

More specifically, the data analyzed was from an online grocery retailer that operates within these 13 U.S. locations. The data was broken down into two separate periods. The first was from June 2012 through October 2012. During that time , an ad campaign was launched by the grocery retailer for its mobile app. The time span was from November 2012 through June 2013.

What was determined was that PC users during the first data set displayed different behaviors than those in the second period of time who had started using the mobile app. The shoppers whose total spending was smaller than the average value within the first span of time boosted their average order size when they started buying over mobile commerce than they had when they were buying over e-commerce.

On the side of consumers who spent more than the average, their size orders didn’t seem to change from e-commerce to mobile shopping. However, when they started buying over mobile apps, they started to make their orders more frequently than they had on their PCs.