Los Angeles — Mobile shopping continues to grow, with more than 110 million smartphone users in the U.S. and thousands of shopping apps available to consumers free of charge, according to a survey by PriceGrabber, an online shopping comparison site.
PriceGrabber said 31 percent of consumers already have shopping-related apps on their smartphone, and 82 percent of those consumers plan to use those apps to help save money when purchasing holidays gifts. With the ever-increasing shopping app marketplace, it’s no surprise that 32 percent of respondents with smartphones said they plan to download new shopping apps in preparation for the upcoming 2012 holiday season, the company said.
Conducted from Sept. 14-27, the survey includes responses from 2,469 U.S. online shopping consumers.
When consumers were asked what types of shopping apps they plan to download for holiday shopping, coupon apps were the most popular, with 70 percent of the vote. This was closely followed by 66 percent of shoppers who said they will download comparison shopping apps; 63 percent plan to download price-check apps with the ability to scan barcodes; and 54 percent of respondents will download apps dedicated specifically to searching Black Friday deals.
Forty-three percent of consumers plan to download deal-of-the-day apps from such websites as Groupon and Living Social; 32 percent selected price-calculator apps to determine discounts, tax and total cost of purchases; and 30 percent plan to download a gift-list app to manage their shopping lists.
As tablets and smartphones have increased in popularity, shoppers are not only using their money-saving apps to compare prices and look for coupons, they plan to follow through with purchasing products at every price point. Forty-two percent of consumers said they plan to purchase both big- and small-ticket items with a mobile shopping app; 41 percent will purchase small-ticket items less than $100; 10 percent plan to purchase all of the holiday gifts on their list using shopping apps; and 7 percent will purchase big-ticket items more than $100.
When PriceGrabber survey respondents were asked how many trips they plan to make to retail stores for holiday gift purchases this year, 45 percent of consumers said they plan to make the same amount of trips, 7 percent indicated more trips, and 48 percent said less trips this year.
