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Brits spent £199 each via m-commerce last year

Thursday, February 13, 2014 - 09:39 by Graham Miller

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The growth of safe shopping online on mobile devices has risen steadily in the past half-decade, with a new report from Cheil Worldwide revealing that the average UK consumer spent nearly £200 through this retail channel over the course of 2013.

55 per cent of respondents to the study said that they had pulled out their smartphone or tablet while at a high street store to check up on prices or record photographic evidence of their trip for use later on.

Around a fifth of those questioned said that they had actively participated in the practice of showrooming, which involves going to a bricks and mortar store solely to look at a particular product, before then buying it at a lower price via safe shopping online.

50 per cent revealed that they purchased their smartphone especially to use it for shopping, so clearly mobile ownership is in itself influenced by emerging m-commerce retail trends.

Report spokesperson, Simon Hathaway, said that more people have been shopping online from their portable devices in the wake of the Christmas break, since a higher proportion of the population now has a handset capable of carrying out purchases.

Since 2008, analysts found that there has been a 63 per cent increase in m-commerce spending in the UK, although the amount of cash being generated by the industry as a whole is significantly higher because more people are actually using smartphones.

For high street outlets, there is still an opportunity to win over consumers, as long as they take into account that people will want to be using their smartphones as they shop. Retailers are embracing this reality and offering free in-store Wi-Fi and other m-commerce benefits, to keep customers coming back and spending their cash, whether online or on the high street.