A recently conducted study has shown that shopping over smartphones is certainly increasing.
According to the latest study conducted on mobile commerce, up to 78 percent of smartphone users are applying their devices to the shopping decision process for choosing the products that they will buy.
The study showed that these devices were often used for shopping behaviors such as product comparisons.
The study was conducted with the participation of 400 users of both smartphones and social media users in India, from among 4,000 total participants. The study indicated that among smartphone using consumers 65 percent use their devices for buying from a retail store. Moreover, 81 percent of them often used social media over those devices to obtain purchasing advice before they actually buy the item being considered.
The mobile commerce study was conducted in 10 different countries, in April 2013.
The study also determined that nearly four out of every five smartphone users had an app from at least one retailer on their device. As the number of people with smartphones continues to grow, it can only be expected that the number of mobile commerce users will also rise. Moreover, as people become more comfortable with using their devices for a rising number of tasks, they will feel more prepared to shop over their smartphones.
The research was conducted by First Data Corp-ICICI Merchant Services. Nitish Asthana, the First Data Corp executive director, pointed out that the more people in India own and use smartphones, the more frequent their tendency to use that device as their first connection to the internet.
In many cases, web traffic isn’t growing as quickly as the number of smartphone users. This means that it is very important for companies to embrace mobile commerce so that they can keep up with market trends, said Asthana.
The research pointed out that consumers in the mobile commerce environment are creating a fundamental shift in shopping as they begin using that channel as their primary choice on an increasing basis. It also indicated that even though there are some security concerns that continue to exist, online banking is also on the rise and this will only help to boost the popularity of shopping and transactions as a whole.
