It is about that time of year when people start thinking about their holiday shopping, getting nervous because there are so many people to shop for, so much to buy, with what seems like so little time. The stores will start to fill with frantic mothers and nervous boyfriends, trying to find the perfect gift and hoping that somebody has not grabbed it already. This is a trend that we have known for our whole lives, but it seems now that it could be changing. According to a recent survey, people will be stressfully running from store to store much less this year and for years to come, but instead they will be mashing the keyboard and clicking frantically.

Yes, what I mean is that many people do not even plan on doing most of their shopping in person these days. Online shopping saves time, it saves energy, and most of all it saves consumers from the stress of the holiday season.

The survey that I get this information from is called “Mindset of a Multi-Channel Shopper” from Marketlive. This is a study that the ecommerce web solutions company has performed each year for the past four years, and this year their surveys are showing some unique results.

With mobile growing so rapidly these days, one would think that more people would put their interest in mobile shopping. However, only about 16% of those shoppers that were surveyed said they planned on using their mobile devices to do the majority of their shopping. Even though this number is up about 3% from last year’s results, I personally would have expected it to have increased more. Regardless, there was still an increase from 12% to 29% regarding those shoppers who planned to do their shopping research on mobile devices, and around 43% of shoppers said they planned on using their mobile devices to redeem coupons or promotions on their mobile devices.

So, apparently shoppers still show a preference to doing their online shopping on an actual desktop computer. It makes sense though, because a desktop platform still allows much more than mobile devices do these days, and most people are shopping online to relieve stress with the convenience of retail websites. So, in terms of desktop shopping, here are the results from the survey;

Of the more than 1,000 shoppers surveyed, 33% said they will do ‘All’ or ‘Most’ of their shopping on the Internet this holiday season. That’s a significant jump from last year’s 25%.

Although people are not likely to actually purchase on mobile devices, they will still be a big part of this year’s holiday shopping, let alone any shopping done in the future. The likeliness of the use of mobile devices being used for research and coupon redemption should still have mobile marketers excited. Still though, if you are looking to target shoppers this holiday season and actually have them make a purchase directly, then desktop seems like the place to get it done. This way, you can take the stress out of your holiday season as well.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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