Here’s good news for marketers who have invested in mobile marketing platforms: Smartphone users will make purchases using their handheld devices. But here’s some bad news: Potential customers will hang up if a retailer’s mobile site functionality is poor.
So says Compete, a division of Kantar Media, which has just completed research into how mobile phone owners use their phones to buy. The biggest finding? The new year is looking as though it will be when mobile commerce finally takes root.
“As manufacturers and marketers better understand how each group actually uses their devices, there’s a huge potential in 2010 for mobile commerce to explode,” Danielle Nohe, director of consumer technologies for Compete, said in a statement.
But she cautioned that not all mobile users are alike. “We’re seeing notable behavior differences across devices, so, for example, users of the Android operating system share different characteristics than Blackberry and iPhone enthusiasts.”
Other key findings from Compete’s Smartphone Intelligence survey include:
* 37% have purchased something non-mobile with their handset within the past 6 months.
* 19% have bought music from their device, 14% purchased books, DVDs, or video games and 12% bought movie tickets.
* Comparison shopping rules, even while en route to a purchase: 41% of iPhone users, and 43% percent of Android users, are likely to check sale prices at alternative locations from their mobile phones while they are shopping.
* 39% of iPhone owners, and 31% of Android owners, check reviews from their handset before making a purchase.
The channel is not without its pitfalls. According to Compete, “consumers are still more likely to abandon mobile purchasing on sites that are not optimized for the on-the-go experience, similar to shopping cart abandonment in the early days of e-commerce”. The survey found 8% of smartphone owners were unable to complete purchases via their devices for reasons that ranged from the site not loading or not being optimized for mobile devices.
“Retailers are beginning to recognize that smartphone use is no longer limited to an exclusive group of tech savvy consumers,” Nohe said in a statement. “As these devices proliferate – and people grow more comfortable transacting, site owners must redesign around mobile shopping ease-of-use.”
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