As mobile payments continue to become more commonplace among retailers, smartphone consumers are already showing a pretty strong appetite for mobile shopping on their devices. According to a June 2012 survey among 5,000 Android and iPhone users in the U.S., Nielsen found that 47% of them have used a native shopping app on their phones. The analysts say that in total some 45 million U.S. consumers have used shopping apps, on average, 17 times in the month.
In terms of what apps are “selling” the best, the strongest players on mobile are those that are strongest online, with eBay, Amazon and Groupon the top three mobile shopping sites at 13.2 million, 12.1 million and 12 million unique users respectively. But, when it comes to time spent on those apps, it’s the less-popular Shopkick that is keeping users engaged the longest.
Shopkick, which bridges the physical and mobile experience by offering users deals while in-store, attracted 6.5 million uniques in the month to rank fourth, but its app proved to be a very strong magnet for usage. It was on average used for over three hours in the month, three times more than the most popular app in terms of unique users, eBay Mobile (which ranked second in terms of time spent).
Nielsen, unfortunately, doesn’t detail which apps brought in the most revenue.
It would potentially be a misleading comparison, however, given that the top ten not only includes auction site eBay and online marketplace Amazon, but daily deal sites like Groupon (2nd) and Living Social (ranked 5th, 4.3 million uniques); mobile apps for physical stores (Target: ranked seventh, 2.2 million uniques); promotions like Shopkick’s; and organizing apps like Out of Milk (ranked ninth; 1.7 million uniques). Some of these apps don’t give users the ability to make in-app purchases, although this appears to be the direction that everything is converging: even if it’s not a functionality that an app will offer on its own steam, it will integrate so that people can do that seamlessly no matter what they are doing on their phones.
It looks like this will continue to grow over time: “Retailers are finding that consumers are willing to use smartphone apps to enhance their shopping experience, and this data shows usage of shopping apps is growing,” Don Kellogg, director of telecom insights at Nielsen, noted in a statement.
Nielsen is a leading global provider of information and insights into what consumers watch and buy. Nielsen is a information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence, mobile measurement, trade shows and related properties. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands.
Founded in 1995 in San Jose, CA, eBay connects millions of buyers and sellers globally in the world’s largest online marketplace, utilizing PayPal to ensure secure transactions. The company also operates specialized marketplaces such as StubHub, the world’s largest ticket marketplace, and eBay Classifieds sites, which together have a presence in more than 1,000 cities around the world. eBay items can be sold either via a silent auction, in which users input the maximum price they are willing to...
Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN), is a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet retail destinations worldwide. Amazon is one of the first companies to sell products deep into the long tail by housing them in numerous warehouses and distributing products from many partner companies. Amazon directly sells or acts as a platform for the sale of a broad range of products. These include books, music, videos, consumer electronics, clothing and household products. The majority of Amazon’s...
Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere. Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...
shopkick was founded in June 2009 by Cyriac Roeding, Jeff Sellinger, Aaron Emigh, and is funded by Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, Greylock Partners and Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, and investor in Facebook and Zynga, and Ron Conway. shopkick bridges the worlds of mobile and physical retail. In August 2010, shopkick launched the first mobile application that hands consumers rewards and exclusive deals at shopkick’s national retail partners simply for walking into thousands of stores and malls. shopkick created...
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