Tracking the smartphone’s impact on consumer behaviour

April 27th, 2015 | Matthew Chung, Manager, Communications and Content

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Smartphone ownership is growing and having a major impact on the consumer purchase funnel as mobile owners turn to their devices for retail activities, research from comScore Canada finds.

For instance, the digital measurement company’s comprehensive study of online trends – “2015 Canada Digital Future in Focus” – revealed that 28% of the country’s 24 million smartphone subscribers have found a store location on a mobile browser, while 18% have made a shopping list on an app.

The whitepaper explores how prevailing trends in web usage, multiplatform engagement, online video and digital advertising are shaping the Canadian marketplace, and how they will impact the rest of 2015. The retail-related data, in particular, reveals the opportunity for marketers to connect with omni-channel consumers.comscore retail activities

Interestingly, browsers still lead apps for the percentage of users engaging in key retail activities. For example, 14% purchased goods or services via browser compared with 8% who did so in an app. However, the report notes this could change, given that 80% of time spent on mobile is in-app, according to its data.

Desktop still gets the lion share of time spent online, with Canadians visiting more sites on desktop and spending more time on those sites than any other country, according to comScore Canada. For instance, Canadians are accessing retail content 60% of the time via desktop compared with 40% for mobile. But desktop usage is flat compared with last year, while it increased for both smartphones and tablets.

On April 30, Darrick Li, Director, comScore Canada will be live at the ACA to deliver a marketer-focused presentation on the whitepaper, which also reveals that:

  • Instant messaging has the largest share of content category time spent on mobile, at 86%, followed by gaming (80% share) and social media (69% share)
  • Banking and retail apps are gaining attention. Retail mobile apps saw 4% growth in 2014, banking apps grew 23% and sports apps, the fastest-growing of all apps, saw usage increase 44%.
  • Canadians are choosing tablets as a TV-watching companion slightly more than their smartphone, with 35% of smartphone owners using the tablet as their second screen compared with 32% who use their phone.
  • Canada’s total digital population in Q4 of 2014 was 29.4 million

Join the ACA for the comScore Canada webinar, “Looking back, looking forward – comScore’s 2015 Canada Digital Future in Focus,” on April 30 at 11:30 a.m. EDT. Insights will include a comparison of Canadians online engagement to other countries, the impact of increasing smartphone adoption and the current state of the online ad industry in Canada.

To register for the webinar, email Davina Wong at .
Complimentary for ACA members only