Shoppers behave differently when making their holiday purchases, depending on their devices.
According to a report from the National Retail Federation, which discussed the role of mobile commerce in this year’s holiday shopping season, although the increase in sales is expected to reach 4.1 percent over last year at the same time, it is believed that smartphones and tablets will represent a larger part of the buying marketplace than it has in the past.
The research also showed that 30 percent of tablet owners would be using their devices to buy gifts.
In fact, among the individuals who were surveyed, the National Retail Federation found that 52.9 percent of smartphone owners and 64.1 percent of tablet owners intend to use their devices for mcommerce purposes over the holiday season. This includes researching various types of gifts products, decorations, foods, and others, as well as making the actual purchases. The fact that more tablet owners plan to shop using their devices is credited to the larger screen sizes which makes the process simpler overall.
The size of the contribution of mobile commerce to overall purchasing is now large enough that it can’t be ignored.
According to the National Retail Federation’s senior director of media relations, Kathy Grannis, “The fact that more than half of holiday shoppers will use their smartphone and nearly two-thirds will use their tablet to aid in their holiday shopping is astonishing.” She also pointed out that “Retailers will definitely capitalize on this trend in the coming months using special promotions in their stores and on their Web sites, social media tools and in-store offers for mobile-toting shoppers.”
Grannis stated that three out of every ten will make an actual service or product purchase from an mobile commerce website using a tablet during the upcoming holiday shopping season, and it is expected that this percentage will only continue to grow in future years.
The report showed that tablet owners are more likely than smartphone owners to want to use their devices for mobile commerce purchases for holiday needs. Though thirty percent of tablet owners have this intention, only 15 percent of smartphone owners have the same plans.