Consumers’ Comfort Level With Big-Ticket Mobile Purchases Grows, Comscore Says

As merchant acquirers prepare for an expected tide of holiday purchase transactions, they might notice that more big-ticket spending will be originating this year from mobile devices, according to Internet metrics firm Comscore Inc.

Purchases of big-ticket items, which Reston, Va.-based Comscore defines as those costing more than $500, “hit an inflection point last year, as significantly more consumers were completing transactions for these items on mobile devices,” Ian Essling director of survey innovation at Comscore, said in a blog post Tuesday. “Our data show that this trend has not only continued, it’s accelerated. Two or three years ago, few consumers were comfortable purchasing appliances, couches or other similar items on mobile phones. Now, we see this type of activity far more regularly.”

Essling did not supply data with his comments, and Comscore did not respond to requests for comment from Digital Transactions News. But Essling’s post noted that “mobile-commerce growth has been outpacing desktop growth for years, but often lent itself more to categories that had an easier [or] shorter purchase cycle or lower dollar amount. Now, our data have shown that big-ticket items are a much more common occurrence on mobile. When you consider all the holiday deals on high-value electronics and other items, we expect big-ticket transactions on mobile to ramp up even more.”

In related news, First Data Corp., the largest U.S. merchant processor, says total spending on what it says is a representative sample of approximately 1 million merchants was up 1.4% as of Nov. 16 for the 2018 holiday shopping season that began Nov. 1 compared with the equivalent 2017 period. Retail transactions slipped 0.6%, but hotel-travel-leisure transactions rose 3.6%. Transactions increased at grocery stores by 2.5% and at restaurants by 4.1%. Service businesses saw transactions rise 0.8% in the period.