The Data Point: 28% of US Consumers Used a Mobile Phone During Their Last Store Trip

Shoppers know they’re in control these days, and merchants that innovate and upgrade systems to provide optimal pandemic-era shopping excursions are benefitting in big ways.

It’s especially true among United States merchants, according to The 2022 Global Digital Shopping Playbook series, a PYMNTS and Cybersource collaboration, derived from a survey of 3,100 businesses and over 13,000 consumers across six countries. Here are some highlights.

• Twenty-eight percent of U.S. consumers used a smartphone the last time they shopped inside a store.

While the U.S. lags all but one nation (the United Kingdom) when it comes to mobile phone assisted shopping, that’s changing rapidly as more people return to physical retail experiences and increasingly use their smartphones in-store for price comparisons, product reviews and more.

The study found that 12% of U.S. consumers are using smartphones while inside stores to “look up coupons and discounts for the items they seek to purchase in-store, for example, and 9% use them to compare prices with other merchants … and 10% use their smartphones in-store to look up product information or reviews.”

• Forty-seven percent who pick up their orders in-store buy additional products on that visit.

While the patterns of U.S. shoppers pace those of other nations studied in terms of mobile ordering and curbside or in-store pickup, American consumers buy more items while making those in-store order pickups, which should drive retailers to leverage this effect with digital and other means.

“Among the roughly 9 million U.S. consumers who acquired their most recent online orders on-site, 47% say they buy other items either often or every time they pick up an online purchase in-store,” the study stated. “Another 17% say they purchase additional items when picking up their orders in-store some of the time.”

That equates to 5.5 million U.S. consumers sometimes, often or always buying extra items.

• Sixty-five percent of U.S. merchants offer digital profiles across multiple shopping channels.

Digital features are a line of demarcation between retailers who are maximizing the digital shift and those that are lagging. The U.S. indexes higher than other nations on things like enabling consumers to create omnichannel digital profiles that take friction and time out of shopping, as well as buy online pick up in store (BOPIS), free shipping and mobile product finding features.

“U.S. merchants that allow shoppers to use a mix of mobile and brick-and-mortar shopping channels earn an average Index score of 139,” according to the study. “This score is 84% higher than U.S. merchants that allow customers to shop in the store without digital in-store features.”

Get the study: 2022 Global Digital Shopping Playbook