Study: Mobile commerce continues to build momentum

By FIONA SWERDLOW, HEAD OF RESEARCH, SHOP.ORG | Published: OCTOBER 1, 2013

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Earlier this year, comScore found that over half of all U.S. Internet users (142 million) owned a smartphone, and another 69 million owned a tablet. The increase correlates well with the time consumers spend online, which is up 86 percent between June 2010 and June 2013. For retail, mobile devices now play the starring role, with 55 percent of the time U.S. consumers spent on retail sites in June coming via a mobile device (44 percent on smartphones and 11 percent on tablets).

These are just a few of the findings from the 2013 Social and Mobile Commerce Consumer Report, released this week at Shop.org’s Annual Summit. The report is a joint project by comScore, Shop.org and The Partnering Group. Now in its third year, the report showcases which consumers are using social media and on which platform, as well as where they conduct shopping research and make purchases across computers, smartphones and tablets. Some of questions the report dives into include:

• Which U.S consumers are using various social media sites from a desktop or laptop versus mobile devices?
• To what degree are smartphone and tablet users incremental to the computer audience for retailers?
• What shopping activities do U.S. consumers conduct via smartphones and tablets? What about in-store shopping activities?
• Should retailers focus resources on mobile shopping functionality and services that are browser-based or delivered via apps?

For retailers, the shift in where and how consumers spend their time online signals that mobile devices are an extraordinarily important component of online shopping – research, social sharing, and purchase – for their customers. Brick-and-mortar retailers have to think of the smartphone and the tablet device as “main doors” that need significant budget and staffing resource investments in everything from design and usability to marketing, merchandising, customer service, and more to flourish. And just as physical stores increasingly support digital channels (think in-store pick up and returns, for example) – these digital doors not only garner direct sales but also actively support sales in brick and mortar stores as well.

The findings of this report underscore also the central role mobile devices will play this holiday season. It’s not too late to test smartphone and tablet experiences to ensure that information such as store location, product detail, pricing, coupons and specials, and other key information is all readily accessible and navigable for these many mobile-tethered customers.

Shop.org members can now download the full report from our site.

via Shop.org Blog http://blog.shop.org/2013/10/01/study-mobile-commerce-continues-to-build-mometum/