Ahead of this year’s holiday season, mobile commerce appears to have reached critical mass, new research suggests.
In fact, a full 88% of regular mobile users now take advantage of retail
mobile apps, according to findings from app marketing firm Apptentive.
That share represents an increase of 174% since Apptentive conducted comparable research, last year.
Even among
respondents who reported a preference for shopping in-store, 47% said they plan to do least some of their holiday shopping with retail mobile apps.
Among survey respondents who reported using
retail mobile apps, 61% said they use the apps at least once a month.
“Avid” customers -- or those using retail mobile apps at least seven times per month and making in-store
purchases seven or more times each month -- now make up 26% of respondents who use retail mobile apps.
Among businesses leading the m-commerce charge, Starbucks’s mobile transactions now
account for 20% of all in-store sales -- more than 9 million mobile transactions per week.
Increasingly, customers are also using apps to help guide purchasing decisions before even stepping
foot in a physical store, Apptentive found.
For example, “app-rooming” is the increasingly popular act of using mobile apps to browse items, then physically going to the store to
purchase said items.
Of survey respondents who use retail mobile apps, 71% said they have “app-roomed” at least once in the last month.
Plus, of respondents who use retail
mobile apps, 51% report using apps while shopping in-store.
Reasons that respondents cited for using apps in-store include redeeming in-store discounts, comparing prices, viewing product ratings
and reviews, finding products, and earning reward points.
For its findings, Apptentive recently surveyed 362 U.S. adults who use iPhones or Android-based devices on a daily basis.