Millennial consumers quizzed over m-commerce avoidance

Tuesday, July 28, 2015 - 08:39 by Sarah Collinson

Consumers aged under 34 took part in a recent study from YouGov, which looked at the extent to which this younger generation utilise their smartphones to carry out safe shopping online. And perhaps surprisingly, there were a small but vocal minority of 15 per cent, who said that they have never harnessed their portable handsets for any kind of retail activity.

This not only means that they have never conducted a transaction from a smartphone, but have also avoided using them to look up product information or offers, which is even more unusual.

Millennials are seen as being most in tune with the latest retail trends, with m-commerce playing a major role in reshaping the UK marketplace at the moment. But respondents were also asked to talk about the things that they do not like about using their smartphones to shop, with some interesting answers forthcoming.

Thirty six per cent of those who do conduct safe shopping online from a portable device criticised the way that products are displayed on smaller screens, with cropping and image resizing issues making it difficult for items to be viewed easily before purchase, in some instances.

A third said that logging into a shopping site or service, then having to enter payment and delivery information, was a chore when using a touchscreen device.

Finally, just under a fifth said that they did not shop while out and about with their smartphone on a regular basis because they were worried that by doing so, they would be eating into their monthly data allowance.

These are all legitimate issues, although it is worth pointing out that some retailers are better at catering to mobile users than others and there are ways to shop from a smartphone without risking a big bill for usage, such as by using Wi-Fi hotspots rather than 3G or 4G data connections.