Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

There's more evidence to support the growing importance of mobile devices along the path to purchase.

According to Nielsen's fourth-quarter 2015 Mobile Wallet Report, 37 percent of respondents said their purchases start with mobile shopping more than one-quarter to half of the time.

The report compares mobile use from the fourth quarter of 2015 to the same period the year before. It found that shoppers are using mobile devices, particularly smartphones, to assist with in-store sales more frequently than for online shopping.

Roughly 72 percent are researching an item or checking prices on a smartphone before buying. Store locators are popular with 60 percent of smartphone users, and 55 percent are using mobile coupons.

Reviews are popular with slightly more than half of all mobile device users and 44 percent of smartphone users use digital lists while shopping....

US consumers are more happy to read marketing emails than ever before.Researchers at Forrester have found that attitudes to emails from brands are actually becoming more positive, despite the fact that most people tend to write them off as annoying "spam."...

Eloqua, the international marketing automation firm, has assembled a selection of key mobile marketing facts, assessing the importance of mobile usage, key aspects of user behaviour, and future trends for mobile marketers.

Usage stats

There are 6.8 billion people on the planet; 4 billion use a mobile phone; only 3.5 billion use a toothbrush.

Search and activity

70% of desktop searches lead to an action within 1 month. 70% of mobile searches lead to an action within 1 hour....

Ahead of this year’s holiday season, mobile commerce appears to have reached critical mass, new research suggests.
In fact, a full 88% of regular mobile users now take advantage of retail mobile apps, according to findings from app marketing firm Apptentive.

That share represents an increase of 174% since Apptentive conducted comparable research, last year.

Even among respondents who reported a preference for shopping in-store, 47% said they plan to do least some of their holiday shopping with retail mobile apps.

Among survey respondents who reported using retail mobile apps, 61% said they use the apps at least once a month....