Figaro teamed up with Lightspeed Research to conduct an exclusive, in-depth survey examining consumers' use, behaviour and attitudes towards mobile commerce
It's half a decade now since marketers started speculating on the mythical year of the mobile. Some said it was coming. Some said it was already here. Others claimed it had been and gone – possibly in 2007. In fact, as Incentivated's Jason Cross suggested in Figaro issue eight, it's more appropriate now to think of ourselves as living in the decade of mobile. Figaro wanted a detailed picture of m-commerce now. Who's doing what? How, when, where and why? Lightspeed Research's survey, conducted exclusively for this issue of Figaro Digital in June 2010, questioned 1,000 mobile shoppers and provides a valuable insight into this massively significant sector.
App-happy
First, confirmation of something we probably knew. Smartphones are revealed as by far the most popular method of connecting to the mobile web (66 per cent) followed by regular phones with internet access (34 per cent) while tablets (wi-fi and 3G) clock in at nine and eight per cent respectively.
So much for the hardware, but what are people buying? Our survey revealed apps to be the most popular purchase: 39 per cent of shoppers have bought one within the last month. That's followed by music (30 per cent), clothes (25 per cent) and e/ibooks (23 per cent). Men are more likely to have purchased apps and take-away meals while women are more likely to have purchased clothes via their mobile device.
Breaking that down a little further, just over half of 18-34 year olds questioned had purchased an app in the last month. A third of 18-54 year olds bought music. Electronic book purchases are most popular with those aged 55-64, with one third of this age group purchasing at least one e/ibook in the past month. Less anticipated is the fact that 15 per cent of all respondents had used their mobile device to buy everyday goods such as food, and that the demographic spread here was even across gender and age.
We were also keen to discover more about the nature of app purchase and consumption. Thirty-six per cent of users currently have between one and five apps on their device, but only six per cent have more than twenty. And most users seem to regard an app purchase as a long-term investment. Fifty-four per cent said once they'd bought an app it stayed on their device for more than three months.
Ad it up
Given the resources that marketers invest in mobile advertising, how effective did our survey suggest this was? A quarter of respondents believe they have been influenced to make a purchase by a mobile ad, with males and those aged 18-34 most likely to have been prompted by an ad. Less helpfully for marketers, only four out of 10 respondents could remember what the ad actually was, though Amazon and iTunes were the most commonly cited.
However, the stats for those who did manage to recall what prompted them to buy are worth looking at closely. Forty-six per cent said it was sent to them or shared by a friend (men are more likely to swap links than women at a ratio of 52 per cent to 35 per cent.) Seventy-one per cent said the catalyst was an ad for something they were already considering buying and 62 per cent said they came across the ad while researching a purchase on their mobile devices.
Always on
One of the great advantages for mobile marketers is the much-analysed notion of the 'always-on' consumer. No need to wait for your customer to check their email or log onto Facebook. With mobile you've got a direct line to their pocket. However, that relationship works both ways. Fifty-two per cent of respondents said they'd used their device to do product research while out on the High Street, and the majority of those (68 per cent) were checking price comparison sites.
Forty-nine per cent wanted more info on a particular product. Forty-five per cent were scanning other users' product reviews and the same percentage of users were checking availability.
Thirty-five per cent visited a manufacturer's official site. (Official sites, with their attendant depth and detail, still inspire a greater degree of trust in consumers than the comparatively shallow social media experience.) And, because we still like to know what the experts reckon, 30 per cent were checking out reviews by professional critics. The lesson here: just as marketers are targeting consumers with ever greater accuracy and intelligence, so mobile enables consumers to keep tabs on the market and research the best deals. On the information super-high-street, it seems, traffic runs both ways.
Convenience store
Why, we asked our respondents, had they chosen mobile over other purchase methods, including laptop or PC? By far the most popular answer was 'convenience' (55 per cent) followed by the entirely logical 'it was easier as the item was for my mobile device' (26 per cent).
Interestingly, discounts and other offers don't appear to have provided much of an incentive. Only 17 per cent said they bought via mobile because the product was cheaper than elsewhere, and only seven per cent said they were prompted to purchase by a mobile-specific discount.
As the m-commerce market swells, how we actually make payments becomes an increasingly significant issue. The vast majority (71 per cent) of respondents said their preferred way to make a mobile purchase was via a website; just 23 per cent favoured an app and only 4 per cent cited an SMS as their preferred method of payment. Overall, Paypal led the charge as the favoured payment route (45 per cent) but respondents aged 55-64 prefer to use a credit card.
A healthy 96 per cent of respondents who had made a mobile purchase in the past month were satisfied with the experience. Of the four per cent who were dissatisfied, the majority (63 per cent) said the process was too slow, and 37 per cent found the whole thing too complicated.
Pages & impressions
As all marketers know, first impressions last. Given that for most consumers, making a purchase through mobile is still a comparatively novel experience, we were interested to know what effect a poor purchasing experience might have.
Forty-one per cent said they would think twice about using a retailer again if they had a poor mobile purchasing experience, and a similar proportion said they might be deterred. Only 15 per cent said a poor mobile experience would not deter them from using a retailer again. Men, it seems, are more sensitive in this area, (44 per cent said they'd be put off, against 37 per cent of women) and 48 per cent of all 18-34 year olds said just one poor experience would be enough to sour their relationship with a retailer.
Going places
Geo-location is a significant new tool in the mobile marketer's armoury, so we were particularly keen to investigate consumer attitudes here. A third of our respondents (34 per cent) have used geo-location apps, with Google Buzz the most popular by 20 per cent. (Foursquare and Gowalla trail behind at 4 per cent and 3 per cent respectively.) Unsurprisingly, digital natives aged 18-34 were more likely to engage with geo-location.
By far the most popular reason among those who haven't adopted geo-location apps is the straightforward 'there's no reason for me to use them.' Fourteen per cent, however, said they didn't like the idea of them. Thirteen per cent said they were worried about the security of personal information and nine per cent felt they were an invasion of privacy. (The same percentage noted that they couldn't use geo-location apps on their devices.)
Shopmobility
Finally, we asked our respondents what would prompt them to make more purchases via mobile over the next 12 months.
Improved speed, better offers, greater ease and security, and a better range of products were all cited as significant factors. Interestingly however, targeted ads came low on the list of incentives: only five per cent said closer targeting might persuade them to get shopping.
There, then, is Figaro and Lightspeed Research's picture of m-commerce now. Convenience appears to be the single greatest reason why consumers buy on the go, and apps are among the most popular purchases. Younger users are more involved, but there remains a strong degree of interest and receptivity among all consumers. Above all, mobile shoppers value speed, ease, specific discounts and security. Not so very different from good old fashioned ecommerce, then.
Survey conducted for Figaro Digital by Lightspeed Research.
www.lightspeedresearch.com/
View or download the full research document here.
Article by Jon Fortgang