Mobile shopping is on the rise in the Asia Pacific, with smartphone users increasingly taking to their devices to make purchases, according to MasterCard’s Mobile Shopping Survey.According to MasterCard, nearly half of Asia Pacific consumers (45.6 per cent) made a purchase using their smartphone in the three months preceding the survey, up from the previous year’s 38.6 per cent, with convenience cited as a key factor by 49.5 per cent of respondents.
Among the other motivating factors cited for using mobile shopping was the ability to shop on the go (43.9 per cent) and the growing availability of apps that make it easy to shop online (39.5 per cent).
Australian consumers are well behind the average when it comes to smartphone shopping, bucking the regional trend of growth, with 19.6 per cent of respondents having made a smartphone purchase, down from the previous year’s 24.8 per cent – this compares to China and India, which registered 70.1 per cent and 62.9 per cent, respectively.
This could likely be attributed to a greater prevalence of PCs in the Australian market, whereas smartphones are the first point of internet access for many consumers in emerging markets.
Gartner last year forecast that mobile devices will become the preferred first point of access for all online activities by 2018, with more than 50 per cent of users using a tablet or smartphone first, with users in emerging economies adopting smartphones as their exclusive mobile devices.
MasterCard found Taiwan and India are the top growth markets for mobile shopping, with the number smartphone users using their mobile devices for shopping more than doubling in both markets over two years.
The survey shows that clothing and accessories (27.9 per cent), apps (21.2 per cent) and daily deal coupons (19.2 per cent) are the most popular purchases for mobile shoppers, while consumers are adopting new mobile technologies to make purchases, with 27.9 per cent of respondents saying that they use mobile banking apps.
With smartphone ownership having a “massive impact” on the way consumers in the Asia Pacific are shopping, Raj Dhamodharan, MasterCard group head, emerging payments, Asia Pacific, noted “brands and online shopping portals need to ensure easy and simple ways to browse and pay, as convenience remains paramount to consumers whether they are shopping on their phones or in-store”.
