M-commerce diversifies retail experience

Friday, June 22, 2012 - 11:01 by Simon Crisp

A new report, conducted by Forrester on behalf of Tradedoubler, has found that m-commerce is having a major impact on the way that European consumers are carrying out their shopping.

Over 2,000 people from the UK, Sweden, Germany and France were questioned as part of the study and it was found that smartphones are increasingly entwined with users' retail experiences, facilitating both safe shopping online and a deeper appreciation of the high street.

Seventy-one per cent of respondents with smartphones said that they look up information about products and services, which they might later buy via their portable device.

Fifty-three per cent said that they have made a purchase from their mobile which was not just a digital download from an application store.

While consumers are out and about on the high street, 42 per cent check up on the prices of the items they are considering, while 13 per cent actually leave the store they are in and head to get a better offer at a rival outlet, when seeing one via their handsets.

Twenty per cent of those questioned said that they could be swayed by the presence of voucher codes or location based offers.

When it comes to safe shopping online from a portable device, it seems that those who are using a tablet will spend more than their mobile-owning familiars.

£185 was cited as the highest average spend for tablet users, which is considerably higher than the £113 quoted by those on smartphones.

Consumers said that they were more likely to part with their cash if the site or app they were using was optimised for a mobile device, with 33 per cent saying that they had been put off by poorly implemented m-commerce services. In addition, some are worried about the privacy and security of shopping from a smartphone or tablet, which must be addressed by retailers.