Commentary

Men More Likely To Make Mobile Purchases

While the eternal wisdom of Sinbad (the comedian) holds that “women be shopping,” when it comes to mobile it seems the opposite is true. Men are much more likely to make a purchase using a smartphone, according to a new study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence and Precision Market Insights from Verizon. The IAB and Precision commissioned Harris Poll to conduct a survey of 2,013 U.S. adults, including 1,176 smartphone owners.

Overall the IAB-Precision mobile study, titled “Holiday Shopping in a Cross-Screen World,” found that 56% of male smartphone owners have made a purchase on their device, compared to 45% of female smartphone owners. While younger consumers are more likely to make purchases with smartphones across the board, there is still a pronounced gender gap, with 76% of male smartphone owners ages 18-34 making a mobile purchase in a typical month, versus 59% of female smartphone owners in the same age range. They’re also bigger spenders, with 22% of men ages 18-34 spending $101 or more a month on their smartphones. Parents with kids under the age of 18 were also big fans of smartphone shopping, with 73% saying it is “very or somewhat valuable.”

The IAB-Precision mobile study also looked at the motivations behind mobile shopping for the general population (not focusing on gender). Here 51% of smartphone owners said they will use their device to shop in order to get the best price or save money, while 36% said they will use it to save time. The most popular categories for mobile shopping and research were clothing, at 36%; dining out, at 31%; music; videos; books, toys and games; and consumer electronics, all at 29%.

Despite all this potential, the IAB and Precision found that mobile advertising efforts remain weak: “Consumers are using their smartphones, tablets and computers to research products and help make shopping decisions, yet advertisers are not placing a strong enough emphasis on mobile, and many consumers are not recalling seeing holiday ads on their devices. Placing a stronger focus on mobile is a major opportunity for advertisers.” Indeed, just 29% of smartphone owners recalled seeing a holiday-related ad on their device, compared to 56% for print and 74% for TV.

A previous PayPal survey of e-commerce activity found that the volume of transactions completed on mobile devices surged over this year’s Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with the total dollar figure up 56% compared to the same period last year, while the number of shoppers jumped 43%.

A separate analysis by IBM found that over half (52%) of all visits to e-commerce sites came from mobile devices, up 22% from last year. However a large part of this activity was apparently just browsing, as mobile contributed 32% of actual sales, per the same analysis. In other words, over two-thirds of transactions were still completed on PCs.

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