Holiday shoppers utilizing mobile apps this season, PriceGrabber finds
LOS ANGELES — Among those that have shopping-related applications on their smartphone, most of them will use this method to help save money when purchasing gifts this holiday season, according to a PriceGrabber survey.
The survey, which polled responses from 3,574 U.S. consumers from Oct. 18 to Oct. 26, found that 39% of consumers that have shopping-related apps on a smartphone. Among them, 84% said they would utilize the apps to help save money on gift items. What's more, 42% said they planned on downloading new shopping apps on their phones for holiday shopping purposes. The most popular planned downloads included comparison-shopping apps, followed by coupon apps and price check apps with barcode scanning capabilities. When asked to select all of the reasons why they will use these apps to assist with holiday shopping:
56% said that they find the best prices using mobile shopping apps;
50% said the convenience of receiving discounts and price notifications directly on a mobile phone;
44% said that they only have time to shop on the go;
38% used the apps to enhance the experience of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores; and
28% said they enjoyed the apps' localization features.
When asked to select all of the places where they plan to use these apps, 79% said on the go, 74% said they will use the apps from home and 32% will use the apps at work. What's more, 63% of consumers said they plan to purchase both big- and small-ticket items with a mobile shopping app and 20% said they would purchase all items via apps this season.
"Following the higher-than-expected success of Black Friday and Cyber Monday this year, we aren't surprised to see a meaningful percentage of consumers planning to spur retailers with another round of shopping closer to Christmas," PriceGrabber general manager Graham Jones said. "We expect that shoppers will stay on top of last-minute incentives and price drops that are certainly on the horizon in the coming weeks via the internet and mobile shopping applications like PriceGrabber, which has already experienced over 1.5 million downloads across the iPhone, Android, and iPad."