Nielsen: Majority Of Smartphone Transactions Happen At Home

Smartphones and tablets have empowered shoppers and confused marketers by creating a more complex multi-platform environment. Yet, if marketers were holding out hope that consumer behavior would eventually “stabilize” around clearly distinct use cases — PCs for ecommerce, tablets for browsing, smartphones for “on the go” — it’s not exactly happening that way.

User behaviors are evolving. And while there are distinctions and differences, there’s also a great deal of overlap in device usage scenarios.

Nielsen offers some perspective on all this via a collection of Q1 mobile shopping data. Nielsen compared the top shopping behaviors and most common device locations (in the real world) for each category.

Below are the most common activities by device type in order of usage or penetration.

Source: Nielsen

What are the most common locations where these activities take place in the physical world?

–Store locator lookups

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: in-car while commuting

–Product price checking

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: 1) in stores 2) at home

–Conducting (product) research before buying

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: 1) at home 2) in stores

–Reading reviews

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: 1) at home 2) in stores

–Creating and using lists while shopping

• Tablet: 1) at home 2) in stores 3) other
• Smartphone: 1) in stores 2) at home

–Mobile commerce

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: 1) at home 2) other

–Social media commenting on purchases

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: 1) at home 2) other

–Post-purchase product reviews

• Tablet: at home
• Smartphone: at home

Perhaps the most interesting finding here is the fact that transactions on smartphones most often happen at home and not on the go. Among the 24 percent of smartphone owners who said they made purchases through their handsets, 72 percent did so at home and not in stores, as one might expect.