New Study: Mobile Commerce Adoption Trends among Millennials

A new Social Lens Research study conducted in partnership with MocoSpace, a top gaming community, highlights that marketers who offer deals, contests, localized content and optimized mobile experiences have the opportunity to better reach and generate mobile commerce sales among Millennials.

Mobile commerce is gaining traction amongst Millennials, 35% of respondents purchase via mobile phones today. Millennials that purchase on their phone do so regularly, 91% purchase monthly. In order to accelerate mobile commerce adoption, marketers have some clear opportunities to improve the ad content and mobile commerce experience; 64% say none of the mobile ads they see usually are relevant or useful; only 9% feel that companies offer a great experience once they click on an ad.

Given how mobile savvy and active MocoSpace Millennial users are, the feedback is telling: optimizing mobile ads and commerce experience is still in the early stages.

Key findings from the study include:

The current state of mobile commerce: Millennials are starting to shift spending to mobile. Those that shift to mobile buy regularly and spend significant amounts.

• 35% of all Millennials surveyed buy via phone currently
• 23% buy via the mobile internet
• 18% use an app to buy on their mobile
• 91% of mobile commerce users purchase monthly
• 30% of mobile commerce users purchase over $50 monthly via their phone

Increasing mobile commerce adoption will require a mix of more useful and relevant mobile ads and an optimized mobile commerce experience.

Discovery: Big opportunities exist to increase the relevancy and usefulness of mobile ads by using smartphone features to customize, increase the entertainment value and localize content.
• 64% say none of the ads they see are useful or relevant
• 30% complain of companies squeezing existing TV Ads on to mobile
• 39% say companies don’t do enough customization (or personalization)
• 44% are interested in coupon, deal for a product I am looking for
• 37% are interested in Local, close by sale or coupon
• 40% are interested in fun game like contest to win prizes

Mobile commerce experiences: Improving the Post Ad click experiences is a big opportunity: Respondents scored the post ad click experience as poor for most companies.
• 9% companies offer a great experience if I click on the ad
• 14% companies make it easy to take action after seeing the ad
• 35% would like to buy more on their phone, but it’s too hard to do so

Social Lens Research surveyed 1,216 Millennial members of the MocoSpace community, a top mobile gaming community with over forty-five million users.
More about the study: