In the Age of Digital, Consumers Still Value Physical Shopping

Consumers still want something physical amid their digital shopping experiences, recent research by PYMNTS has found.

Almost two years into their own digital transformations, consumers around the world have changed how they use the physical store and how they use their smartphones to improve the in-store shopping experience.

More than a third of brick-and-mortar consumers in the nations we studied — a sample of about 65 million people — used their phones while shopping last year, in most cases to ensure they were paying their lowest price possible.

Fifteen percent of these consumers used their smartphones to compare prices offered by other merchants in real time, and 14% use them to find discounts like coupons or special offers.

In the United Arab Emirates, nearly 60% of brick-and-mortar shoppers reported using their smartphones to help with their in-store shopping journeys — both to compare prices and access coupons and discounts, and to do things like look up product reviews online, access loyalty programs and check inventory status.

An estimated 25 million shoppers in the six countries we surveyed (21% of all consumers) say they use brick-and-mortar stores as pickup points for their online purchases, with 14% of eCommerce shoppers picking up their orders in stores and 7% picking them up curbside.

Australian eCommerce shoppers seem especially fond of this method, with 24% of them picking up their items in-store last year.

Meanwhile, 42% of the consumers we studied used smartphones at least once at some point during their most recent shopping journeys in 2021, either to purchase products on their phones, compare prices online or use mobile wallets to pay for their purchases. This means there was an 18% increase between 2020 and 2021 in consumers using their smartphones to assist with their shopping experiences.

To learn more about how merchants are leveraging digital to improve customer satisfaction online and in their stores,download the 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index, a collaboration between PYMNTS and Cybersource.