Consumers are using mobile phones for retail-related activities at an increasing level, according to a new study from ForeSee Results. The US edition of the “ForeSee Results Report on Mobile Shopping” indicates that 33% of all survey respondents had accessed a retailer’s website using a mobile phone (compared to 24% in 2009), and an additional 26% said that they plan to use their mobile phone to visit a company’s website, mobile website, or mobile application in the future. In other words, more than half of all online shoppers are either already using or plan to use their phones for retail purposes.
Mobile Product Research Triples
Compared to last year, about three times as many people are using their phones for product research purposes (30% in 2010, 11% in 2009). Use of retailer-developed mobile applications has increased seven-fold (from 1% to 7%), and purchasing from phones has quintupled (from 2% to 11%). ForeSee Results advises that any retailer not making significant strides in developing user-centric mobile shopping apps is missing a huge opportunity.
Price Info Leading Reason to Visit Specific Retailer Site
Among the group that exhibited mobile shopping behavior for the specific Top 40 retailer they rated, most looked up price information (56%), compared different products (46%), looked up product specifications (35%), or viewed product reviews (27%). ForeSee Results analysis suggests retailers need to understand what their shoppers want, need, and expect so they can develop mobile apps and sites accordingly.
Visiting Competitor Sites Increases Dramatically
The proportion of mobile shoppers who look at a competitor’s site while in a retailer’s brick-and-mortar store has nearly doubled compared to last year (46% compared to 25%). The leading reason shoppers visit a mobile site while in a brick-and-mortar store is accessing that store’s website (69% compared to 52%).
Another one-third of shoppers look at a comparison shopping site, also double the 2009 percentage (32% compared to 15%). Accessing mobile applications of that store or a competing store are still relatively uncommon behaviors, but both have grown significantly from their 2009 participation levels.
IHL: Text Coupons Most Popular Retail-related Consumer Mobile Activity
Looking at a variety of retail-related consumer mobile activities, text coupons lead both in terms of current engagement (25%) and planned engagement in the next 12 months (47%), according to a recent study from IHL Group. Probably due to the high percentage of consumers who will already be using mobile text coupons within 12 months, planned engagement within 12 to 24 months is only 9%, tied for second-lowest with consumer self-checkout.
The other two retail-related consumer mobile activities currently used by more than 20% of mobile phone subscribers are regular barcode (22%) and 2D barcode (21%). Coupons on mobile screen only have 16% current engagement, but 38% planned engagement within the next 12 months, second only to text coupons in this category.
About the Data: ForeSee Results used the methodology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to examine the impact of mobile shopping trends on retailers. Nearly 10,000 survey responses were collected from November 29, 2010 through December 15, 2010 from shoppers who had visited the top 40 retail web sites within the prior 14 days.
