Tablets Drive More Shopping

“Mobile is top of mind for many retailers, but when they’re evaluating their strategies they need to understand where in the mobile ecosystem to spend money,” said John Mellor, vp of business development for Adobe’s digital marketing business. “It’s absolutely a different-enough form factor that it’s driving different behaviors. In terms of purchasing, tablets are ruling the day at the moment,”

Tablet audiences are, of course, still far smaller than those of smartphones – Adobe’s data suggests around 4 percent of retail website visits — but that gap is closing as the price of the devices fall.

As wider demographic groups beyond just early adopters and high earners begin to embrace them, spending patterns may start to normalize. Mellor acknowledged that figures such as average order value would probably start to decline as tablets become more widespread, but maintained that the nature of the devices will probably always make them more lucrative for retailers than smartphones.

“Tablets offer a distinct experience from smartphones. We believe user behavior will continue to be different, too. For example, Smartphones are probably more likely to be used for functions such as checking prices and other in-store behaviors than tablets, added Austin Bankhead, Adobe’s director of industry marketing for its digital marketing-related products.

So while behaviors around tablet and smartphone devices continue to change, one thing’s for sure, at least. For the short term, tablet users will remain happier to dip into their pockets than smartphone ones.