Consumers not only prefer these devices but are using them entirely differently than their smartphones.
Though consumer behavior over smartphone and tablet commerce has already started to be seen as quite different when it comes to the way that they use the devices for retail shopping, recent statistics are starting to provide greater insight into those differences.
People who use the larger of the two small screens have very distinct shopping behaviors.
When it comes to tablet commerce, BI Intelligence has reported that users are more likely to do a larger amount of research and will shop at home at night than their smartphone using counterparts. Moreover, larger devices are also used for making bigger purchases, and they are used for shopping more frequently than mobile phones.
Retailers haven’t been paying very much attention to the difference between mobile and tablet commerce.
The reason that has been proposed regarding the lack of attention that retailers are paying to the unique nature of these shopping behaviors is because there is a considerably lower penetration rate among those devices. However, if they continue to ignore the opportunity being offered by tablets – as seems to be the trend – then they will be putting themselves at risk of missing out on a very important channel that is rapidly outperforming smartphones.
According to the BI Intelligence report, tablets are starting to emerge as the preferred device for mobile shopping. Other data that was revealed by the report showed that purchases made by way of mobile shoppers is expected to be worth almost $30 billion, this year. The larger screen mobile devices will be responsible for about half of this by the end of the year, despite the fact that their penetration rate is notably lower than that of smartphones.
This aligns well with research that has recently been released by comScore, which has shown that of all of the time that is spent on the complete online shopping process, mobile is now accounting for 59 percent. Regardless of where the actual purchase is made, mobile and tablet commerce are playing an important role in the stages ahead of time in which brands, products, stores and prices are compared, leading to a purchasing decision.
