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.