Survey Says: 47% to Holiday Shop Using Mobile Devices

Published in

Mobile Discoveries

4 min readOct 29, 2020

We surveyed 278 U.S. consumers between the ages of 18–74 to find out how they plan to shop this holiday season. With mobile being a key player (AppAnnie predicts 1 billion hours to be spent on Android alone), how do consumers plan to shop? And what do consumers’ mobile shopping habits look like?

Key Demographics

Generations: 55 Gen Zers, 81 Millennials, 101 Gen Xers, 43 Baby Boomers
Gender: 133 male, 144 female, 1 non-answer
Phones: 121 (44%) own and use Androids

1) How do you plan to shop for the holidays?

Overall: Online shopping wins

47% of respondents plan to use mobile apps to shop this holiday season, while 88% plan to do their holiday shopping online. This means top retail brands need to develop a strategy to encourage holiday shoppers to move from online to in-app.

Gen Zers and Millennials: An even mix

Survey respondents belonging to the Gen Z and Millennial cohorts are planning to be versatile this holiday shopping season. While 87% said they’ll shop online and 49% will use mobile apps, 54% will brave the crowds and shop in-store.

Gen Xers and Baby Boomers: Playing it safe

Deciding to err on the side of caution and efficiency, a whopping 90% of Gen X and Boomer respondents plan to do their holiday shopping online. However, a good majority of these groups (57%) said they’ll be shopping in-store while 44% of them will use mobile apps.

2) When choosing to download a shopping app, what is most important?

Overall, 54% of savvy users are downloading shopping apps to garner more savings during their holiday shopping. They’re looking for deals and loyalty points, specifically, but 23% also chose retail apps with “better user interfaces than the website”.

To my personal amazement, 3.7% of respondents ages 18–39 have never downloaded a shopping app. But considering a recent ComScore report found that 67% of people “rarely” or “never” download mobile apps, this isn’t too wild. As brands strive to reach young, tech-savvy consumers, they may need to find more unique ways to do so.

3) In the past six months, which of the following stores (online and in-person) have you shopped at?

Millennial and Gen Z shoppers seem to agree on at least one thing — the best retail stores. The whopping majority prefer three brands: Amazon (91%), Walmart (76%), and Target (65%). Similarly, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers reported shopping at the same three stores: Amazon (91%), followed by Walmart (79%) and Target just missing the bullseye (58%).

Unlike the younger generations though, this more mature audience also noted shopping at Home Depot and Lowe’s (57% and 46% respectively). While these two stores mentioned may be due to lockdown-induced home improvement, they still had a decent following and therefore are worth a shoutout.

4) When did you last download a shopping app?

Gen Xers and Baby Boomers: 27% downloaded a shopping app this month

Just 19% downloaded a mobile shopping app the week they were surveyed and 19% reported it had been more than a year ago since they downloaded one.

Gen Zers and Millennials: 35% downloaded a shopping app this month

The majority of our Gen Z and Millennial group reported that they downloaded a shopping app in the last 6 months and 27% downloaded one the week they were surveyed. Only 9% of this cohort said it’d been more than a year since downloading a shopping app.

*Pro Tip: Fewer downloads mean brands must find better and more unique user acquisition (UA) channels.

5) When ordering online or in-app, how do you prefer to get your order?

77% of respondents prefer having their orders delivered to their homes instead of in-store or curbside pickup. When comparing in-store and curbside, 17% of Gen Zers and Millennials prefer curbside pickup versus the 8% of Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. Now call me crazy, but I’ve become addicted to Target’s drive-up pickup…

Learn More: Apps By Generations infographic