E-retailers are beginning to offer mobile applications for cell phone users to enhance their in-store shopping experience. As part of ForeSee Results annual research on the Top 40 e-retailers by sales volume, they studied how and when shoppers are using mobile applications.
The vast majority of online shoppers in the survey owned mobile phones (91%), but only about a
third of respondents used them while shopping.
People used phones more often to call someone to get an opinion or to send a
picture of an item (and less for price comparison shopping or store-initiated mobile apps.)
They assume that, more often than not, the opinion the caller gets encourages them to buy the item. They suggest retailers should consider "phone-a-friend" promotions to encourage this kind of shopping behavior.
The study concludes that Mobile apps offer a huge opportunity for retailers to encourage in-store purchases. Shoppers who use a mobile phone as part of an in-store shopping experience are 6% more likely to buy something in the store.
They recommend that retailers should encourage smartphone users to adopt retailer-generated mobileapps, not only to ask about a product or send a picture of a product to a friend, but to compare online prices, remember specs of something they were researching online, and identify theproper model or version of a wish list item.
It will be quite sometime be there is huge penetration of cell phones being used as part of the instore experience, but they expect it to double next year and continue growing from there.