Purchasing power: mobile no longer a ‘minority sport’
The most recent Orange Exposure study is a defining moment for m-commerce, says Unanimis‘ Will King – and proves that mobile devices are now central to the way we shop.
The release of results from this year’s Orange Exposure research confirms what some of us have been confidently predicting since the launch of 4G – faster networks are not just encouraging broader mobile use, they’re changing the way people shop.
That’s going to have profound implications for consumer marketing strategies.
For many advertisers that we speak to, mobile is something that they know they ‘should do’, and much like the early years of social media they are struggling to understand ‘how to’. The oft-quoted discrepancy between time spent and money invested in mobile advertising bears testament to this challenge.
Orange Exposure is an annual independent study by TNS and our parent company, Orange Advertising, into media habits across UK, France and Spain. This year, it offered an opportunity to assess the impact of 4G networks on consumer behaviour while exploring the role of mobile alongside other devices and touchpoints in consumers’ shopping habits.
And its striking conclusion is that behaviour is indeed changing rapidly. At a basic level, 4G users consume more content – for instance, 30% of them in the UK regularly use their mobile to download videogames, compared with 17% of their 3G counterparts.
The research also established the continued dominance of Android over iOS in the marketplace for the second year running, with almost half of all mobile devices, across all three markets, running Android. The market share also increased in the tablet market, in part led by the success of Samsung’s devices.
Advertisers are already indicating their willingness to reassess the role of mobile at both ends of the purchase cycle – it’s now a key touchpoint at the very beginning and its hugely influential right at point of purchase too.”
For example, only 6% of tablets in the UK were Samsung in 2012. In 2013, this leapt to 19%. In France, 13% of tablets were already Samsung in 2012. Today, Samsung commands almost a third of the tablet market in France.
Also of interest is the finding that people are increasingly using apps to access the internet, rather than the traditional browser route. This demonstrates the impact of better designed apps for mobile and we can expect that apps will be the predominant access point in the future. This finding will be significant for advertisers and retailers alike.
Which brings us neatly to the study’s most interesting insight – that 4G is accelerating the m-commerce revolution. It shows that 53% of respondents used their mobile to pay for something in the last six months, compared with 34% of 3G mobile multimedia users.
And the research highlights a compelling behavioural trend underlying the headline figures – mobile technologies are driving a growing trend in “show-rooming,” whereby consumers use their mobiles to compare prices and read comparative reviews of products (often in-store, in front of the product itself) before making a purchase. This trend was evident in all three countries covered by the study, with 12% of respondents in the UK confirming that they show-roomed on their mobile before a final purchase decision.
What’s more, they’re not just using their mobiles when they’re in retail environments, they’re using them for primary research – which wasn’t always the case in the past. The study shows that, in the UK, 18% of respondents confirmed that they used their mobile initially to check for information before conducting deeper research on another device.
In other words, this year’s Orange Exposure establishes the extent to which mobile devices are central to the way we shop these days, with consumers using them to research products, compare prices, and ultimately purchase items.
These “path to purchase” findings are hugely important. Firstly, they’re essential for advertisers in justifying the delivery of budget and spend on mobile. The more readily that we are able to explain the role that mobile plays in purchase decisions, the more easily we’ll be able to talk about budget and value for those advertisers.
Secondly, they show us that people are changing the way they make decisions about products. It’s really important to understand how this works – how the information is delivered and how it is accessed by consumers. If brands are able to understand that more readily, then that will feed back into their media schedules and help them to make more informed decisions.
Advertisers are already indicating their willingness to reassess the role of mobile at both ends of the purchase cycle – it’s now a key touchpoint at the very beginning and it’s hugely influential right at point of purchase too.
So, the Exposure research could be a defining moment in the history of m-commerce. I think it’s fair to say it proves conclusively that mobile is no longer a minority sport for consumers.
Will King is marketing director of Unanimis.
Twitter: @willkng