With the start of the holiday shopping season, a record number of consumers will be using their mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to make their purchases, instead of heading out to join the lineups in stores or even using their personal computers.
Data from research performed by mobile ad network Jumptap and comScore shows that 31 percent of the owners of these devices have already purchased a product or service at some point through mobile channels. This figure, though, has not drawn half the attention of the 63 percent of the study’s participants who own tablets and said that they’d used their devices to buy something.
Consumers find that their mobile devices allow them to shop whenever and wherever they want, as well as to perform product research and price comparisons even when they are already in the store or are online using their computers. Often, they then still complete their transactions online or in the store, depending on the results they find using their mobile devices as a research tool.
An additional study conducted by Chitika Insights examined the amount of mobile shopping activity when compared to all other forms of traffic so that it could attempt to decide whether or not 2011 could truly be called the first year that smartphones were a primary shopping channel.
Chitika Insights attempted to quantify the use of smartphones for shopping by determining how often customers used these devices in order to assist with their shopping efforts. The study ran from November 2 through November 8, 2011 and involved a sample of several hundred million impressions.
What it determined on a broad definition, was that mobile devices were used as a part of 11.5 percent of shopping impressions. Desktops and laptops remain the main choice for shoppers for filling their everyday needs.
