1 in 7 European smartphone owners are making online purchases using their mobile devices, as confirmed by recent statistics by comScore.
These figures are based on a study of mobile phone users across the five leading European markets, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Upsurge in retail site visits
Prospects for online retailers with mobile optimised websites or commercial applications look promising, with a 43% increase in Europe’s online retail audience over the previous year.
Differences are apparent, however, among the five countries comprising the study. Germany leads the group in measure of audience size, with 9.9 million users accessing retail sites and the UK tails closely behind with its audience of 9.7 million.
In terms of growth, Spain is crowned as the fastest growing market at a rate of 66.5% a one year period, and now boasts 3.3 million smartphone users who utilise their devices to access retail sites. Italy’s growth of 61.3% (5.6 million users) ranks second to Spain.
Impact of smartphones on in-store behaviour
Consumers are increasingly employing their smartphones in-store to engage with friends and family or seek further information before making an actual purchase. 23.5% of consumers studied from the EU5 reported that they had taken photos of products within the physical retail store. This was the most popular smartphone-related activity carried out in-store, followed by 14.3% of subjects who sent the photo taken to members within their reference groups.
Thus smartphones are facilitating users in gaining real-time purchasing advice and recommendations from friends and family or even the wider public via social networks. Taking this a step further, 14% of consumers studied by comScore admitted to calling or texting their friends and family about a product from retail outlets.
Positive outlook for m-commerce
M-commerce is taking off in the EU5 as 1 in 7 smartphone users admit to completing a retail transaction on their device over the course of a month. This is reflected in the yearly change of Europeans partaking in mobile purchases: an increase of 37% between August 2012 and August 2013.
The benefits of the increase in mobile transactions is, however, to be felt differently across industries. Fashion (clothing and accessories) is the most popular category as depicted by 5.4% of subjects, followed by consumer electronics (3.8%), books (3.8%), tickets (3.4%) and personal care and hygiene products (2.6%). Smaller value purchases appear to be most common, but this is likely to change as consumer trust of mobile payment security and data privacy becomes widespread.
