• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 16, 2012

To answer my own headline -- it is because we are the original multitaskers! According to new Harris Interactive research commissioned by Placecast, adults with kids under the age of 18 in the house are the most likely to engage in all kinds of digital commerce, but m-shopping especially. In fact, parents are leading the way when it comes to m-commerce, with 27% of the 2,262 surveyed saying they have made a purchase on their smartphone in the last year, compared to only 17% of non-parents.

Generally, parents are tracking slightly ahead of the general population when it comes to smartphone ownership (52%) and they are among the most receptive to marketers. The research finds that 9% of parents have made a purchase due to a marketing text message --three times the 3% of non-parents who have done so.

The parent class is also the sweet spot for many of the most advanced location-based services because they tend to use their on-board GPS more than others. For instance, 40% of parents with kids used GPS or mapping to find a location compared to 22% of non-parents, while 32% have accessed a merchant Web site (vs. 22% of non-parents) and 27% have downloaded an app from a merchant (vs. 13%).

No doubt other demographic axes are playing a role here, like age -- but it is even clear that parents with younger children (under 6) are even more active on smartphones. For instance, 50% of these parents with younger kids said they would be receptive to mobile alerts from coffee and beverage outlets, compared to only 34% of those with kids over 6. The patterns are similar for almost every product category.

And of course all of these metrics appear to be on the rise. Generally about a third of people with kids said that they were using their phones more now than they were a year ago to look for everything from promotions to coupons.