Analysts predict major festive m-commerce spend

Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - 13:39 by Simon Crisp

Everyone knows that Christmas is a big time for safe shopping online in the UK, but industry observers are keen to work out which types of devices the average consumer will be using to carry out their present purchasing in 2012.

A new report from IMRG and Capgemini, has found that at least 4.6 billion will be spent through e-commerce outlets between the 3rd and the 16th of December, in preparation for the big day.

This is a large figure by any standards, but perhaps more interesting is the news that at least 920 million of this will be generated by sales made on smartphones and tablets.

This means that about a fifth of all online sales will come from portable devices, which is significantly higher than the 8.2 per cent total that was achieved in the first three months of the year.

IMRG spokesperson, Tina Spooner, said that this impressive performance which is predicted for smart devices is an indicator of the major changes which are taking place in consumer shopping habits.

She said that people now tend to browse products in shops during the weekend and then fire up their PC to purchase their chosen items shopping online, during their free time on a Monday.

However, more people are now using a smartphone or tablet to carry out pre-Christmas sprees, while they are doing something else. This is usually carried out while watching television, which is why the practice has been referred to as double screening by analysts.

Spooner said that IMRG had recently conducted a survey, in which 80 per cent of smartphone and tablet users said that they were regular double screeners, which indicates that large numbers of people are likely to shop online in this way during the last few weeks of 2012.