Survey: 91 Percent Of Parents To Use Smartphones Black Friday Weekend

As the first winter snow blankets parts of the East Coast and Midwest, a blizzard of new Black Friday/Cyber Monday PR-driven survey data, predictions and “infographics” are hitting the wires and inboxes. Each of the involved studies offers slightly different figures and estimates of what will happen. Among those addressing mobile usage there’s a consensus: smartphones will be out in force.

Accordingly, today the IAB released survey data (n=2,033 US adults) collected in October about expected Black Friday weekend shopping. The slice of data that the IAB published this morning focuses in specifically on parents’ anticipated use of smartphones. (Parents with smartphones was a smaller subset of the overall survey data.)

At least 45 percent of these respondent-parents, with kids 12 and under, were planning to be out in the annually shopping melee this weekend. An additional 30 percent were unsure when the survey was conducted and the remaining 25 percent were staying home.

Black Friday weekend is likely to see heavy smartphone usage (both at home and on the go). More than 90 percent of mobile parents in the survey said they expect to use their smartphones for various shopping-related purposes during the Black Friday weekend. That compares with a somewhat smaller percentage (61 percent) of the non-Black Friday crowd who expected to use mobile devices as part of their holiday shopping  at some point.

Among the things that Black Friday smartphone parents anticipated doing with mobile devices were: checking inventory availability before heading to stores, finding sale items, conducting general research and showrooming (price comparisons in stores). A surprisingly large percentage (44 percent) said they anticipating buying gifts through their smartphones.

Another indication of mobile marketing or perhaps “m-commerce” potential, smartphone parents indicated that content on smartphones has in the past triggered purchases on behalf of their kids. The problem is that most mobile commerce and mobile checkout experiences are frustrating and overly complex.

Mobile commerce is growing nonetheless and will account for a meaningful percentage of ecommerce transactions over the Q4 holiday shopping period. Roughly 10 percent of ecommerce in the US is currently driven by mobile devices according to comScore. Expect that number to grow when the post-holiday data are analyzed.