Tuesday, August 14, 2012

When do iPhone Owners Use Brand, Price Comparison Apps?

When do most Apple iPhone owners use  branded retail apps? On weekdays, a study by IDC using Onavo data has found. When do Apple iPhone owners use price comparison apps? On weekends. But when do they spend money? Perhaps Sundays, the study suggests.

The single biggest day of comparison app usage is Saturday, and the single biggest day of retail app usage is Sunday. This potentially implies that more mobile price checking and “showcasing” are done on Saturdays and more actual mobile purchases are being done on Sundays.

The second highest day of retail app usage is Monday. With Sunday as the number one day for retail app usage, it would have been expected that Saturday or Friday would be the number two day, IDC argues. This implies that Sunday retail app usage has a positive carry-over effect on Mondays.

The IDC study used anonymized U.S. iPhone usage data for the months of June and July 2012, and looked at use of BarCode Reader, PriceCheck by Amazon, RedLaser by eBay, and ShopSavvy.

Retail brand apps analyzed included Best Buy, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart.

"One of the most surprising findings was that different mobile commerce app types have distinctly different usage patterns based upon days of the week," noted Scott Ellison, vice president, Mobile & Consumer Connected Platforms at IDC. "Users spend more time with retail brand apps during the workweek than pricing comparison apps, but that pattern reverses itself on the weekends when price comparison app usage soars past retail app usage."

1 comment:

Colleen said...

Apple is finally listening to their costumers after all these years. To me this sounds like Apple has finally realized that competition is really tough out there. Copying features from the competition while being shameless about it has forced Apple to finally offer an iPhone with a bigger screen. Well done Apple!
Cheers, @Colleen from AC/DC Adapters

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