Consumers relying on mobile shopping to save money (survey)

There's been a lot of talk about consumers gravitating towards mobile shopping during the holiday season this year, primarily for the ease of doing so from wherever one might be instead of enduring the pain of dealing with large crowds at stores.

But another survey suggests that the primary incentive for mobile shopping might be even more simple than that: the goal to save money.

Here's how the results break down according to a winter holiday shopping survey from PriceGrabber. First, 39 percent of consumers surveyed have shopping-related apps on a smartphone. Then, 84 percent of that group replied that they plan to use their apps to help save money for holiday shopping.

So how do these consumers plan to save money by using a smartphone? Primarily by using apps for price checking. We've already seen online retailers be proactive about interest in this area. Just look at Amazon's recent ploy to offer consumers a discount if they use Amazon's Price Check app for Android and iOS devices and then by the product from Amazon instead of from the brick-and-mortar location.

More than half (56 percent) of survey respondents cited price checking as the number one reason. However, the ease of being able to shop from anywhere still proves to be a big factor as 44 percent cited this as an incentive for mobile shopping as well because that's the only time they have to do so.

Interestingly, 38 percent said they would use the apps to enhance the experience of shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, while 28 percent enjoy the localization features on apps.

For reference, these findings are based on the responses from 3,574 U.S. online shopping consumers asked during a survey conducted from October 18 to 26.

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