A Look Back At Mobile Shopping

Oct 27, 2014 by Mark Maier

Some Retailers have geared up thier mobile website or apps for Christmas shopping but what do the statistics say?  According to mCommerce Daily, their time spent in Brick and Mortar stores is on the rise....

"While shopping habits of mobile consumers evolve, their in-store and online behaviors are hardly in sync.

Out on the streets, more people are going into stores and staying there longer while those who purchase online tend to favor online-only stores, based on two new studies.

One study focused on the activities of smartphone owners in and around stores while the other dealt with online shopping patterns of mobile consumers.

The amount of time shoppers spent in a store increased to 26 minutes, up from 22 minutes a year ago, based on the latest monthly store tracking from retail analytics firm Euclid, which measured data on tens of millions of domestic shopping sessions by tracking smartphones near and in stores.

The number of shoppers who entered a store as a percentage of those passing by reached 9%, according to the analysis.

Within a 30-day period, 12% of shoppers returned to a store location more than once, according to Euclid.

The percentage of shoppers who entered a store and left within five minutes dropped two percentage points to 9%, meaning fewer shoppers are essentially in and out of a store quickly.

Another piece of good news for physical retailers came in a separate study.

When shopping for items that consumers have the option to buy either online or in a store, more than half (61%) of smartphone owners purchase more than half of those items in a physical store, according to an online questionnaire of 1,000 smartphone owners nationally conducted by Survey Monkey for Contact Solutions.

However, for the activity of online commerce transactions, the picture is a bit different. The online survey found that more than half (52%) of smartphone owners who purchase online do more than half of it with online-only retailers.

Perhaps as a bit of more good news for brick and mortar retailers, 39% of consumers were disappointed with the ability to get help within a mobile app experience.

However, when faced with in-app shopping difficulties, most smartphone owners don’t tend to run to a store as a result. Mobile shoppers who struggle with mobile apps for shopping take various actions:

• 51% -- Close the app and abandon shopping cart
• 40% -- Go to website using desktop or laptop
• 20% -- Stop using the app entirely
• 12% -- Go the store and shop there
• 8% -- Call customer service"

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