The way consumers use mobile phone devices has evolved over the last decade and played a significant role in enhancing consumers’ shopping experiences regardless of where and how they are shopping.
According to a recent cross-country study conducted by PYMNTS, “Approximately 130 million consumers in Australia, Brazil, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States now use their smartphones to shop — whether to shop in stores, order grocery deliveries via app or enable touchless payments at the brick-and-mortar point of sale (POS).”
Read the report: 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index
Per the 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index report, published in collaboration with Cybersource, consumers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) emerged the most “mobile” when it comes to in-store shopping, with 59% of them — approximately 882,000 consumers — using their smartphones to enhance their in-store shopping journeys in 2021, higher than that of any other country surveyed.
These UAE consumers are also the most likely of all to use their smartphones for a broader array of functions while perusing brick-and-mortar store aisles, including to price-shop in real time, look up product reviews and ratings, check inventory statuses, earn loyalty and rewards points and locate merchandise in stores.
Due to this significant change, merchants across all continents have been forced to improve shopper satisfaction both online and in physical stores by providing both a comprehensive cross-channel shopping experience and the digital shopping features needed to support it.
Here again, merchants in the UAE came in second only to U.S. merchants when providing a seamless user experience, earning an average index score of 103.7 — a high index score means that consumers encounter fewer frictions when shopping with a merchant, per the report.
Source: PYMNTS
UAE merchants’ secret to success lies in implementing features in a way that makes them readily available and easy to use, without the need to offer all the shopping features PYMNTS studied, including cross-channel digital profiles, in-store pickup options and online product details.
Even with the limited number of features, UAE shoppers still reported a much more seamless shopping experience than their counterparts in other countries like Mexico, an indication that consumers need more from merchants than simply offering more features.
To enhance their customers’ shopping experiences, merchants must also ensure that features are easy to find and convenient to use.
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