Phoning It In: 52% of Americans Did Mobile Phone Research In Stores Over Holidays

The interesting news is not that Americans used their mobile phones in stores. We knew that.

What is curious is HOW they used those devices.

As the accompanying chart illustrates, the largest number of consumers used their phones not to comparison shop and not to look up product reviews. No, the largest number - by far - called a friend to ask their opinion. That's news.

It's news because it suggests that despite the oceans of information available at their finger tips, consumers remain somewhat insecure about their own knowledge and judgment. The implication for marketers, merchants - and designers - is that there is both a vacuum and an opportunity. The vacuum is created by the fact that consumers either do not trust the data available, find its design too confusing or hard to access and/or still require a reliable opinion when it comes to significant purchases. Significant does not necessarily mean big or expensive. At the moment, the data do not support that conclusion though it is not an unreasonable assumption. It may simply be a color or a garment that affects the way they feel about themselves.

The design and marketing opportunity, therefore, may be in providing that assurance either through technological advance or, heaven forefend, by designing the retail environment to encourage more interaction with seemingly knowledgable humans. The trend has been to reduce staff, not add it. But these data suggest that personal advice may be a killer app. JL

Ross Dawson reports in his Trends in the Living Networks Blog:

The cross-over between physical and online retail is not just for innovators and techies. It is the way people shop. In a 30 day period spanning Christmas, 52% of Americans who have mobile phones (and who cares about the rest? ) used mobile phones to help them make buying decisions, according to research from Pew Internet.
This is very significant. One of the biggest threats to physical retail stores is that shoppers do price, service, and delivery comparisons while in the shop. Unsurprisingly, better options often come up.

The very high uptake in this study shows this is not an outlier behavior – it is mainstream and it won’t be too long before the significant majority of people will do mobile research while in stores.

Of course this does not mean that physical stores will not exist. They have many reasons to have long and sometimes prosperous lives ahead. However it does mean that their value proposition becomes fundamentally different. Given the overheads of physical retail it is almost impossible to compete on price. This means other factors, of course including the immediacy of customers getting what they want, as well as service, advice, relationship, and other issues, will hold sway.

Retailers must embrace and not deny this future. This study suggests it is not the future, it is the present.