• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, January 17, 2012

“It’s by no means a representative sample of the overall consumer population,” says the author, Bill Siwicki, Managing Editor, Mobile Commerce, but certainly useful as a harbinger of mobile shopping in the future.

According to a December survey of a sample of TechBargains.com visitors, reports Internet Retailer, among smartphone owners in this survey, 32% of women and 25% of men made half or more of their holiday purchases via mobile phones. Overall, 34% of iPhone users and 20% of Android users who made purchases using their phones say half or more of their holiday purchasing was done via their smartphones. Among tablet owners, 35% of women and 21% of men made half or more of their holiday purchases via their iPads and other tablets.

58% of mobile phone owners have made purchases via their devices compared with 94% on laptops and 75% via tablets, says the survey of TechBargains.com visitors, who skew tech-savvy. For those who shop with their phone:

• 79% use it to research products,
• 77% to compare prices
• 73% to browse stores

Of the 58% percent of shoppers who make purchases via their mobile devices:

• 69% use both the mobile browser and apps to buy products;
• 18% only use apps
• 13% only use a mobile browser

On mobile phones,

• 70% of shoppers purchased digital goods,
• 60% purchased physical merchandise,
• 46% purchased services and
• 38% purchased consumable goods, the survey finds.
• 76%, say ease of use is the reason they would buy on
• 34% cite price point as the reason why they would buy

75% of tablet owners use their devices to make purchases;

• 90% use tablets to browse stores,
• 89% research products and 85% compare prices.
• 86% of iPad 2 owners make purchases via their tablets while
• 74% of Kindle Fire owners make purchases via their devices.

Yung Trang, president of TechBargains, said “... results strongly indicate that mobile devices are currently much better for window shopping than for buying... tablets are widely used for research and shopping... “

59% of men and 54% of women in the survey made purchases using their mobile phones. Of those who didn’t use their mobile phones to make purchases, 42% of men and 38% of women cited security concerns, and 54% of men and 59% of women cited difficulty completing purchases, notes the report. 74% of men and 77% of women made purchases using their tablets.

At the same time, a Prosper study suggests that 40% of mobile users use their smartphone or tablet to compare prices while in the store and purchase from another retailer’s physical store...  .

For more information about the TechBargains report, please visit here, and to the complete Prosper Holiday Mobile Survey, go here.