Young consumers love mobile shopping and hate checkout interactions

Tuesday, May 5, 2015 - 13:45 by Sarah Collinson

A pair of studies published in the past week have painted an interesting view of the way that the millennial generation are approaching the retail market, focusing on the importance of mobile devices.

As well as revealing how important the mobile app experience is to forming youngsters’ opinions on a brand, one study looked at the changing habits in bricks and mortar outlets, indicating that the rise of self-service checkouts is causing more millennials to avoid tills manned by human cashiers.

Firstly, the Oracle Mobile report found that 48 per cent of the consumers who fall into the millennial category in the UK said that if they used a retail app to carry out safe shopping online and were dissatisfied with the experience, they would be dissuaded from using the brand’s products or services in the future.

Interestingly, the global trend for m-commerce is actually having less of an impact in the UK than elsewhere, with just 63 per cent of British shoppers under the age of 35 revealing that they are happy to use a mobile app to make a purchase via safe shopping online.

This is lower than the 73 per cent global average of app favouritism, although as with previous studies, it is likely that the reason for the UK’s alternative stance is the fact that the e-commerce market here is so mature.

The second study, published by Retale, found that 20 per cent of millennials do not want to interact with in-store cashiers, preferring self-checkout services where available.

In addition, over a quarter of those questioned said that they would like to be able to use their mobile devices as a portable checkout when shopping on the high street, combining the experience with m-commerce, for a slicker payment process.