VentureBeat.com reports on a new survey by the Pew Research Center saying that “more than half of all adult cell-phone owners (52 percent) used their phone to either phone a friend, look up product reviews online, or comparison price shop during a 30-day holiday shopping period ... . While shopping offline, 38 percent of cell owners called a friend for advice, 24 percent looked up online reviews, 25 percent compared prices via their cell phones, and 33 percent, or one third of cell owners, used their mobile device to either check online reviews or pricing information.”
The story goes on:
“Who are these savvy price-conscious mobile shoppers? Primarily youngsters and middle-aged adults ages 18 to 49, college educated urban and suburbanites, and non-white cellphone owners, Pew found. Just 4 percent of mobile phone owners ages 65 and up, however, used their device to look up online product reviews.”
The story goes on:
“Who are these savvy price-conscious mobile shoppers? Primarily youngsters and middle-aged adults ages 18 to 49, college educated urban and suburbanites, and non-white cellphone owners, Pew found. Just 4 percent of mobile phone owners ages 65 and up, however, used their device to look up online product reviews.”
- KC's View:
-
Okay, so the old folks aren’t going to do this as much. This should be scant reassurance to people not paying attention to this trend, because with every passing year, more and more people in this age bracket will be using their mobile devices for such purposes, because they were doing it when they were younger.
The simple, irrefutable fact is that when people are in the store, they are still subject to a wide range of outside influences and privy to an enormous amount of outside information. Retailers have to not just put product out there, but have to engage in an ongoing conversation with the shopper and exists both inside and outside the store. And, understanding that so-called “showrooming” is going to take place, they damned well better have some sort of product and/or service that can’t be replicated by the store across the street or down the block.
if they don’t, they might as well start thinking now about retiring or getting into another line of work.
