• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, August 30, 2016

Back-to-school shopping, another annual benchmark for the magnitude of mobile commerce, is just about over for many parents, so the final tallies are just around the corner.

Indications are that the shopping season was another strong one for mobile, with smartphones continuing their move to center stage.

For overall spending, most (91%) parents expected to spend the same or more than last year, according to a study conducted by Survata for Fatwallet.

More than half of parents planned to use their smartphone for back-to-school shopping with many (41%) considering the lowest price to be a key factor in purchasing.

While most (57%) parents expected to use a smartphone to shop, a quarter (25%) of them use them for researching and comparing products with 32% tapping them to make a purchase.

This makes sense, since most shoppers overall still head to stores to shop. And this school year is no exception. Parents with children in grades K to 12 planned to carry out the majority of their back-to-school shopping in physical stores, according to a survey by Bizrate.

With the exception of school supplies, price is not a major driver of purchase influence, according to that survey.

Price should matter, considering the amount of money spent during the school shopping season. Parents expect to spend an average of $674 on clothes, electronics and notebooks this year, according to the National Retail Federation. In total, that back-to-school spending adds up to $27 billion, no small change.

Back-to-school shopping is but one benchmark element of mobile commerce. The next one, of course, will be holiday shopping and those stats are tracked by the day, since the spending is so fast and high.

While the two shopping periods highlight the significance of mobile commerce, annual figures are even more impressive.

From this year until 2020, mobile commerce sales in the U.S. will grow about 260% from $79 billion to $284 billion, according to BI Intelligence.

An another indicator of growth, mobile accounted for only 12% of the $303 billion in ecommerce sales in 2014. This year, mobile commerce is estimated to represent 21% of the $385 billion in sales and by 2020, 45% of what then will be $632 billion in sales.

The payments portion of mobile commerce also may soon receive a needed boost.

Only 16% of merchants currently engage in mobile commerce today, but an additional 32% are considering accepting mobile transactions within the next 12 months, according to LexisNexis.

Even more significantly, 80% of large ecommerce merchants say they will accept mobile payments within the next year or two.

So as back-to-school shopping drives more mobile activity, additional consumers are coming into the fold and learning the ins and outs of mobile commerce.

Those lessons are likely to continue into the holiday shopping season. The next set of mobile commerce research results are very likely to reflect that shift