47% Surveyed Believe Retailers Aren’t Doing Enough To Cater For Mobile

LONDON, UK – August 16, 2011 – Velti (NASDAQ: VELT), a leading global provider of mobile marketing and advertising solutions, today revealed results from a UK consumer retail survey, including the fact that Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) users spend an average of 13 days a year browsing retail sites on their mobile devices.


Velti LogoTony Lewis, Director at Vision One Research said: “The retail and mobile industries are ones to watch in the next couple of months as retailers start to learn more about not only what their customers want, but also what’s capable on mobile. Conducting the research was an eye-opener into the world of consumers and their mobile devices, with some unexpected results. The fact that consumers are demanding more from retailers will perhaps make those brands realize that if they don’t act soon and provide a valuable mobile offering for customers, then they will have missed the opportunity and customers will flock to brands that are catering for them on mobile.”

The point that PAYG users are spending over a third longer browsing mobile retail sites than their contract/iPhone counterparts (eight days a year), presents a significant opportunity for retailers to incentivize those browsers and convert them into paying customers.

However it seems making this connection may not be as straight forward as it sounds. The research, commissioned by Velti, revealed that high street brands are lagging behind when it comes to mobile retail. 66% of iPhone users and 47% of all consumers surveyed believe that high street retailers are not doing a good enough job where mobile is concerned. This is supported by the fact that when it came down to naming three stores consumers had made purchases from in the last 12 months, Amazon and eBay dominated with 50% share split evenly between them, whereas Tesco (7%), Argos (4%), HMV (2%), Asda (2%) and Next (1%) all failed to make a significant impact with consumers.

Consumers did, however, reveal how retailers can tempt them to make further purchases. Almost 50% of the consumers, who had received a targeted SMS from a retailer or brand, then went on to buy something from that specific retailer. 

The research also revealed how mobile is working in harmony with other media when it comes to marketing and advertising campaigns. 82% of consumers, who used their mobile while watching TV, researched further details around a product or service on their mobile devices after having seen an advertisement on TV.

Kelaine Olvera, Director of Marketing across Europe at Velti commented:
“We commissioned this survey to examine how consumers are using their mobile devices when it comes to retail. While some of the results were reasonably predictable, many others demonstrated just how far consumers are ahead of retailers when it comes to mobile.”

Kelaine continued: “Pay-As-You-Go users, arguably a demographic often disregarded by retailers, are spending almost two weeks a year browsing retail sites, which is a phenomenal amount of time. It wouldn’t take much further engagement from a retailer’s point of view to convert them from browsers into customers. At Velti, this is exactly the kind of work we’ve been doing with brands across the globe, helping to increase engagement with their existing and potential new customers in order to help drive revenues and brand loyalty.”

The online survey was answered by approximately 1,800 mobile phone users, age 18 to 65 from across the UK.