M-commerce shopping stats revealed by Tesco

Tuesday, November 30, 2010 - 12:00 by Sarah Collinson

A survey conducted by Tesco Direct has found that ten per cent of UK consumers like to carry out safe shopping online from their mobile phones, in place of using traditional PCs or laptops to get the job done.

Over 4000 people were questioned in the poll and of those who use m-commerce sites to shop, close to 50 per cent claimed that they did so while sitting in front of the TV.

Almost 17 per cent of respondents who harnessed m-commerce said that they would buy gifts using their mobile when they were on the bus and 25 per cent said that they regularly headed to shopping sites when commuting to work.

Three quarters of those questioned expressed a common concern about the rising cost of Christmas, which is coming at a time when household budgets are stretched as a result of the recession.

Tesco's Ian Crook said that the approach of the festive season meant that the supermarket chain was anticipating the first significant rise in m-commerce activity in 2010. He said that the convenience of being able to access safe shopping online from mobile devices was attracting more UK consumers to the platform.

More than 500,000 people went to the Tesco Direct e-commerce site from their portable handsets this October, but Mr Crook expects that this figure will increase exponentially once Christmas shopping gets into full swing.

Those who were surveyed by Tesco said that one of the biggest reasons for using online retail sites this year was that they did not want to get stuck in queues on the high street. Although some have expressed fears about e-commerce activities having an impact on worker productivity, just seven per cent of respondents said they were intending to do so during working hours.