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Young People Driving M-Commerce Growth

Friday, June 18, 2010 - 13:28 by Sarah Collinson

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Mobile commerce or M-commerce as a channel for safe shopping online is one of the fastest growing areas of eCommerce and is being closely monitored. The latest research suggests that it is UK shoppers between the ages of 18 and 34 who are the driving force in the M-commerce boom.

A recently released study by the Mobile Marketing Association and Lightspeed Research found that in Western Europe it is young people from the UK who seem to have most embraced this particular method for shopping online. Confidence that M-commerce provides a safe shopping online experience appears to be growing within the UK, as more of those surveyed in the UK stated that they would be likely to continue shopping via their mobiles than their counterparts living in France or Germany.

The research also discovered some other interesting information including the fact that 52% of the British, 54% of German respondents and 56% of the French preferred to pay for content on their phone by being billed via their statements by their mobile operator.

The main thrust of the study identified that British youth are leading the growth in M-commerce with 19% using this avenue for online purchases. German mobile users were the next major group with 13%, followed by the French with 9% of users choosing M-commerce for purchasing online.

It will probably not come as too much of a surprise to find that purchasing mobile ringtones and applications accounted for the highest numbers of M-commerce transactions. Of the respondents, 12% of the British, 8% of Germans and 5% of French users bought mobile content in April of this year.

Whether members of the age 35+ UK population will become more confident in using their mobiles for internet shopping remains to be seen but the M-commerce boom certainly seems set to continue.