Report: Retailers unprepared for rise in mobile shoppers

Ann Arbor, Mich. -- Mobile shopping is expected to reach new highs this holiday season, but retailers aren’t prepared to meet customers’ mobile needs, according to a new CFI Group study, sponsored by eBay Enterprise.



The “Holiday Shopping 2014: Mobile on the Rise” report finds that 70% of consumers have used a smartphone to make a purchase in the last six months, up from 59% in 2013. And 41% of consumers said they plan on making even more purchases with their smartphones in 2015.



The report reveals shoppers are using their phones mostly to compare pricing and read product reviews, but retailer’s tech-enabled associates are using mobile devices primarily for transactional purposes. In fact, the data finds 41% of tech interactions with customers merely facilitated checkout processes. For shoppers that received assistance from a tech-enabled associate, only 24% received assistance comparing store pricing to Web pricing and only 25% received assistance to check competitive pricing. Additionally, only 16 percent of associates were able to access product reviews for a customer.



“We’re witnessing an unprecedented rise in the popularity of mobile shopping and that is likely to increase as shoppers turn to their devices at home and in brick-and-mortar stores this holiday season,” said CFI Group CEO Sheri Petras. “A strong mobile strategy will be the determining factor between this year’s retail winners and losers.”



With little or ineffective internal mobile device use from store associates, the study finds retailers must maximize consumers’ self-service mobile options to be successful this holiday season by creating functional, easy-to-use mobile applications and websites. Fifty-four percent of consumers say they use both mobile commerce sites and applications on their smartphones, though consumers report a 2:1 preference for mobile websites over applications.



While the number of mobile shoppers is rising, fear of security breaches is holding others back, with the lack of comfort with transaction security as the leading cause of refusal to purchase on a handheld device. Forty-two percent of consumers expressed this fear in 2014, up from 34% of consumers in 2013.