Smart shopping
A new study from the Internet Advertising Bureau into m-commerce has revealed that the average value of a mobile transaction has jumped in the past 12 months. In the 2010/2011 period people spent on average £17.49 per mobile transaction, up 43 percent - over a fiver - on the previous year's figure of £12.20.
This seems to be the product of greater consumer trust in buying stuff with their mobile phones. People are understandably cautious about performing too many sensitive financial tasks on such a small, fragile and losable device, but they're clearly warming to the idea.
The IAB study found that the main reason why people use m-commerce has moved away from it being an experiment, towards its greater convenience. The proportions of both people who consider m-commerce to be too expensive, and those who prefer using PCs over mobile phones has declined.
However, when performing a transaction on a mobile device, people still prefer to use websites (40 percent) over apps (17 percent), and they spend over £20 on websites, on average, compared to £13 on apps. However this could merely be a consequence of the number and type of company that favours apps for its m-commerce activities. NFC technology is generally approved of, with travel, events and refreshments being the most likely to involve some kind of NFC interaction.
Alex Kozloff, senior mobile manager at the IAB said: "It has been interesting to see from this study that the same people who were using m-Commerce a year ago continue to use it in 2011, but this time are spending significantly bigger amounts on their mobile phone. Furthermore, there is clearly a consumer appetite to use m-Commerce in store, so it will be fascinating to see consumer adoption of NFC as the technology becomes more commonplace in the UK."
