Mobile’s Impact On Path-To-Purchase

Path-to-purchase.

That critical three-word phrase has become the magic bullet that all retail executives are trying to better understand, thanks to the consumer’s increasing reliance on the mobile phone to help them with their shopping process.

And every retailer is trying a variety of tools and techniques to optimize the consumer’s journey down that path-of-purchase in a way that adds value to the consumer and provides advantages to themselves in the process.

So, how do consumers start and end their now mobile-enabled shopping experience and how should that impact retailers thinking about how to make themselves a value-added passenger on that path-to-purchase journey?

Here are a few stats from a variety of sources that describe where the points of friction are, how consumers are using their smartphones for shopping and where the mobile shopping experience starts and stops.

For instance, these 10 key stats provide some insight from an industry survey of 1,511 randomly selected mobile users:

110 Percent | Increase in the number of consumers who used smartphones for product research in 2014

81 Percent | Consumers who say they research items via smartphone before visiting a store

73 Percent | Consumers who say they engage with mobile ads before visiting a store

72 Percent/23 Percent | Consumers who research goods via mobile; then those who buy via mobile

65 Percent | Consumers who say they are more likely to visit stores based on seeing mobile-based retail ads

61 Percent | Consumers who say they would like to receive mobile ads for retail discounts

51 Percent | The lift in in-store visits attributed to retail-specific mobile ads vs. all other 2014 mobile ads

46 Percent | Increase in the percentage of consumers who said they research retail on mobile devices, compared to 2013

20 Percent | Consumers who said they rely on mobile to make their final purchases after research

8 Percent | Consumers who said they research in a store first and then buy on mobile

Clearly, the path-to-purchase is being guided more and more by retailers and marketers who are subscribing to the notion that consumers need to be interacted with in mobile-friendly digital ads. Consumers no longer expect to go to the retailer to find the best deals, they expect the deals to come to them — and they are using mobile increasingly as the tool to get them those deals.

Equally as important in understanding how consumers use mobile to shop is understanding how they use mobile for everyday purchases. This means those consumer packaged goods that are a necessity and not luxuries like many of the other mobile shopping categories (like entertainment, electronics, etc.).

For instance, consider these stats:

70 Percent | Consumers who tried new consumer packaged goods after seeing a mobile ad (a 49 percent increase from 2013)

69 Percent | Online grocery consumers who said they use their mobile device for grocery shopping

69 Percent | CPC consumers who redeemed consumers’ coupons via mobile in 2014 (food and beverages is the top category with 71 percent saying they have; household products ranks second with 53 percent)

67 Percent | Percentage of moms who said they use mobile devices in-store to search for discounts while shopping for consumer packaged goods

59 Percent | Consumers who said they use mobile devices while shopping for CPG (16 percent increase from 2013)

58 Percent | Consumers who said they used online grocery shopping apps via mobile in 2014 (16 percent increase from 2013)

57 Percent | Male consumers who used mobile for grocery delivery services (compared to 43 percent of women)

37 Percent | Consumers who use mobile to search for discounts/promotions while shopping

27 Percent | Consumers who said they use mobile while shopping to compare pricing when looking for CPG