New research from Experian Marketing Services finds that mobile devices are playing an increasingly important role in how users make purchases across all categories.
While purchases using a computer or digital tablet still reign supreme, transactions via mobile phones are on the rise, and marketers are poised to take advantage of this trend.
In particular, the wealthy prefer smartphones for everything from making charity donations to buying food.
Among device owners, purchase rates consistently are higher on tablets and computers than on smartphones due to the larger screen. However, the one exception is charitable giving.
Affluents are just as likely to have made a charitable donation from their smartphone as they are to have made one from their tablet, and contributions made from a computer are only marginally higher than those on tablets and phones.
Charitable organizations have made donating as easy as sending a text, which is likely why charitable donations is the only category with mobile purchase rates as high as those from a tablet.
“Marketers can take a page from the charitable sector’s playbook and streamline their own purchase process. This might include allowing repeat customers to conduct transactions using financial information on file, using mobile-optimized design for collecting payment information or other innovative approaches that allow the would-be customer to transact from anywhere,” says Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Experian Marketing Services.
