U.S. consumer interest in using mobile phones to make purchases and in receiving incentives and coupons to shop at retailers has doubled since last year, new research suggests.
Sybase Inc. surveyed 1,000 U.S. adult consumers ages 18 to 64 in late October for the Mobile Marketing Association and found that 62% of respondents said they would make a purchase with their mobile device this holiday season, especially if prompted by coupons, discount offers, text alerts, gift cards or loyalty points. Just 32% of respondents said they would in a similar survey last year.
However, without incentives, only 22% of respondents this year said they would make a mobile payment, still more than double the 10% who said so in 2010.
“We are now a mobile society and not just for communications,” says Michael Becker, the marketing association’s managing director for North America. “Consumers are using mobile devices to make and form commercial decisions to fill needs in their lives,” including initiating payments, he says.
Besides supporting payment technology, retailers should optimize their websites for smart phones and tablets as mobile commerce develops, Becker says.
Hip clothing and accessories retailer Steve Madden, for example, says sales rose $500,000 within 30 days after upgrading its website for use by mobile devices, plus it says it earned an additional $2.5 million in additional sales from consumers using mobile devices to get information about its products and stores, according to a Forrester Research study from 2010.
Indeed, consumers often use phones to look up businesses and take action within hours by visiting the store or making a purchase via their phone Web browser, Sybase’s research confirms. Of the 56% of consumers surveyed who said they would use their mobile phone for other retail decisions that lead to purchases, 38% said would do so to find a retail location, while 28% would use a phone to research or access coupons and 27% would use a phone to look up a product review.
Introducing such payment schemes as Google Wallet and the Isis mobile payment platform could bolster those behaviors, Becker says. Moreover, retailers should integrate their payment systems at the point of sale to include Near Field Communication and two-dimensional bar code readers to make mobile payments available and effective, he adds.
Loyalty market analysts have lauded the mobile phone as the future application for retail loyalty programs (
Google also has made inroads with retailers’ loyalty programs with its single-tap program (
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