Category: Tablet Commerce

A growing number of shoppers are using smartphones to buy products they want during the holiday season.

According to Google, a rising number of consumers are choosing to skip the long Black Friday marathon shopping experiences for small bursts of mobile commerce purchasing through the use of their smartphones.

These m-commerce purchases occur in scattered moments over time instead of all at once as is the Black Friday tradition.

Google has labeled these little bursts of mobile commerce shopping as “micro-moments”. In its blog, the company predicted that “This holiday season, shopping ‘moments’ will replace shopping ‘marathons,’.”

Approximately 54 percent of shoppers who will be making purchases this holiday season have said that they plan to do some of their shopping on their smartphones during periods of free time, such as while they are eating breakfast in the morning or during their daily commute, said Google. This data was generated through an analysis conducted between that company and Ipsos MediaCT from a consumer survey on their holiday season shopping behaviors.

The research showed that people would rather use mobile commerce and are less likely to take marathon in-person trips.

Last year, Google observed a steady increase in mobile shopping throughout the length of the holiday season and noted a decrease in the number of spikes on the traditionally preferred shopping days such as Black Friday morning.

The company explained in its blog that “This type of shopping has lead to shorter, more purposeful mobile shopping sessions.” It also went on to say that “In fact, while shoppers now spend 7% less time in each mobile session, smartphone’s share of online shopping purchases has gone up 64% over the last year, and 30% of all online shopping purchases now happen on mobile phones.”

Ahead of the Thanksgiving weekend, approximately 61 percent of holiday shoppers will already begin researching the products that they are thinking about buying. That is an increase of 17 percent over last year, despite the fact that Thanksgiving fell very late in the season in 2014. That said, Google still pointed out that while shoppers may start researching early, most purchases will still happen later on in the holiday season.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations are increasingly using smartphones to shop and buy.

A recent study conducted on behalf of Visa has shown that consumers in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (A.S.E.A.N.) member countries are using m-commerce on an increasing basis for making purchases of products and services online.

Consumers in these countries are also using their mobile devices to make bill payments instead of using PCs.

The “2015 Regional eCommerce Monitor Survey for Asia-Pacific” from Visa determined that the A.S.E.A.N. countries are now using m-commerce at a rate that is 22 percent larger than it was last year. The report was based on an analysis of the results of a survey in which there were 11,760 participants. The respondents were between 15 and 55 years old and lived within any of 13 different Asia-Pacific countries, including the A.S.E.A.N. countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam.

The largest amount of growth in the use of m-commerce over the last year were in Indonesia, mainland China and Taiwan.

In Indonesia, 36 percent of respondents said that they were using mobile commerce, while 34 percent of those from mainland China were shopping over their smartphones and tablets. In Taiwan, that figure was not far behind at 28 percent.

The Visa Asia Pacific regional director for e-commerce, Conor Lynch, stated that “The results of the 2015 survey show that making purchases on-the-go through mobile devices is becoming the norm in the Asia-Pacific.” He also added that as the comfort level increases among consumers with regards to using mobile devices to learn more about products they’d like to purchase and to actually buy them, it won’t be long before mobile commerce overtakes traditional online shopping over desktops and laptops among retail stores.

In A.S.E.A.N. countries, there is a very powerful drive toward the use of m-commerce as there is considerable ease of access over mobile and there is a significant push in the real world to use smartphones for in response to advertisements. Many billboards, print and television ads encourage shoppers to interact with them by way of their devices. This, according to Sandy Shen the research director at Gartner.