Are you ready for couch commerce?

This holiday season, PayPal predicts that couch commerce will explode even further.

The term was coined by eBay and PayPal, and last year, both companies predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2011 would be a day when consumers went from their dinner table to their couch to start their holiday day shopping on Thanksgiving Day on their mobile devices.

Both companies saw a 511 percent increase in global mobile payment activity than on Thanksgiving Day 2010.

“Retail has fundamentally changed,” said Anuj Nayar, director of communications for PayPal, San Jose, CA. “We expect to see some of the phenomenon, massive spike in shopping on Thanksgiving Day and couch commerce to explode.

“We also expect to see a percentage of shopping from mobile devices to rise.”

According to Mr. Nayar, although many marketers tend to differentiate mobile and online shopping, the two are similar in many ways. Mobile shopping, however, is done on a smaller device.
“From our point-of-view, mobile is popular,” Mr. Nayar said. “People shop on their smartphones during the day and their tablets at night.

According to the executive, PayPal sees shopping from their mobile devices during the hours of noon to 1p.m. and users turning to their tablets from 6-7 p.m.

“The way that people shop from their devices is different,” Mr. Nayar said. “It just varies at each device.

The shopping paradigm is changing and mobile is changing that,” he said. “I think the key point that we’re seeing as a company, is that consumers are using technology in new ways to find the best deals and they’re fundamentally changing what retail means and how people shop.

“The mobile device, more than anything else, has bridged the lines between online and in-store commerce. It’s changing the ways that consumers shop. Retailers have to react to catch up to what consumers are doing.”

“Consumers are exercising their mobile shopping skills, with more than two-fifths – 41 percent – pre-shopping online versus only 27 percent in 2011,” he said. “”Consumers have increased their use of smartphones inside stores and are leveraging their devices to the frustration of retailers.”

Contact us TODAY so that you are ready for the couch consumer!  It's never too late to get your website mobile friendly!

www.beachbumsmarketing.com