Brick-and-mortar is a no-go —literally. Consumers simply don’t visit physical stores to discover new products anymore. In fact, there is about a 58 percent chance that a consumer knew what they were going to buy before they even walked into the store to make their most recent purchase.
So, where are modern shoppers going for new, exciting products to purchase? Simply put, they are going everywhere. Consumers are shopping in their homes, in the car, at the store, on the bus and even at work — all using their smartphones.
More than one-third (35 percent) of consumers between the ages of 25 and 34 say they typically find new products by browsing on their smartphones. What’s more, 44 percent of consumers who bought goods from a mass merchant did so remotely, via their smartphone.
More importantly, they are doing it because they like to — and because they can.
In the Remote Payments Playbook, the PYMNTS team collected and analyzed survey data from nearly 5,000 American shoppers to learn how connected devices have shaped every step of their shopping journeys — how they browse selections online and in-store, how they discover new products and, finally, how they pay for those products.
Before conducting this research, we knew that computers, smartphones and tablets had changed retail forever, but we had no way of knowing exactly how, or how much. Modern consumers take out their phones and start browsing whenever they have a spare moment, with two-thirds of the people who pay remotely via mobile doing so at home, 15 percent in their car and 6 percent at work.
Moreover, 73 percent of shoppers who paid remotely via smartphone first found the item they purchased online.
Other key findings explored in the report include:
To learn more about how central the smartphone has become to the modern shopping experience, download the report.