Mobile devices are more and more used for shopping

A recent study showed that consumers are increasingly more confident in purchasing products and services via their mobile phone: 37% of smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Android & Co) owners in the US purchased something non mobile in the past 6 months via their mobile terminal. What is striking is that iPhone owners have apparently a lot of money, because they spend more (per item) than users of other popular devices. Android users are the most cost-conscious and compare prices more often.

M-commerce is thus booming, but there is still a lot of work to be done. Many sites have not been adapted to the smaller screens of mobile devices yet – with, as a consequence, many would-be customers who cannot complete their order. According to the study, it was an impressive 8% of the respondents who wanted to purchase a product who were not able to do it from their mobile device.

But also for companies that do not sell their products online, it is very important that they adapt their website to mobile users. As a matter of fact, an increasing number of consumers go online when they are in a store to compare prices with those of competitors or to read the reviews of the product that they want to purchase in a real store. That is one of the conclusions of the Motorola 2009 Retail Holiday Season Shopper Study, conducted among consumers in the US, Europe and Latin American countries.

In this context, consumers attach much importance to mobile vouchers or discounts. In the US, such vouchers are currently being used a lot. The chain of stores JCPenny, for instance, uses a system which allows users to download a voucher on their mobile phone. At the checkout, thanks to new scanners that can read 2D barcodes, these vouchers can be scanned from the screen of the mobile device, after which the discount is deducted.