Mobile Less Popular Way to Buy Than in Store, Researchers Say

Research released today reveals that only a limited number of shoppers are using mobile technologies to buy their goods, despite ongoing investments in a multi-channel approach from retailers.

According to Shoppercentric, 45 percent of all consumers now own a smartphone, and 14 percent own a tablet.

Consumers with smartphones cited a number of reasons as to why they choose to shop in store, rather than through a mobile application or site; 51 percent said they could not experience products effectively, 46 percent blamed poor network coverage and only 29 percent felt it was secure.

Danielle Pinnington, managing director at Shoppercentric, suggested retailers need to invest in ensuring mobile applications can be demonstrably secure, so that consumers can feel as confident shopping on their smartphone as they do on the internet.

"It's the idea of sharing information about yourself that could be used for other purposes that raises a question mark in people's minds about how secure these access points are," said Pinnington.

"They are feeling pretty comfortable with online now, as they know when they pay for things they will get security questions coming through. But they are not seeing this level of security when shopping on smartphones using mobile applications," she added.

"There is an opportunity here for retailers to implement processes to make people feel comfortable with mobile security going forward".

This indicates that although in-store shopping is still the most popular, consumers are looking to other channels, and Pinnington argues that retailers need to integrate the management of these channels to ensure success.

"The key point is that shoppers are becoming very adept at picking and choosing the channel that suits them under particular circumstances. Yet retailers and brands have tended to compartmentalise - thinking of shoppers who shop versus shoppers who go online. They've even structured themselves so that the shops are managed by one team and the online by another - very few have successfully merged the two," said Pinnington.

"There would be one overall team - 'the retailer' - and then they would manage different disciplines within that. Running a store is different from running an online retail channel, but they need to be under the same umbrella and aiming towards the same thing".