The ubiquity of use and related obsession with carrying a mobile phone has changed behaviour and the dynamics around how consumers choose to carry out their own research on a brand.

Any company who doesn't obsess about user behaviour with mobile phones are without a doubt missing a huge opportunity.

These opportunities are not confined to the B2C sector, this change in buying behaviour across B2B continues its client side disruption in the buying journey.

  • Twenty-five percent of online shoppers plan to use a smartphone to shop online this holiday season, according to a recent survey from The NPD Group. Just two years ago, 19% of shoppers reported doing so.
  • One out of five online purchases will be picked up in stores, and those who use smartphones to shop online are more likely to use buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) services, the survey found.
  • Twenty-two percent of consumers used an app to pay for holiday purchases in stores last year, and 39% of those consumers plan to use apps more often this holiday season.

As shoppers grow more and more comfortable using their smartphones to make purchases, retailers are embracing opportunities to reach them through those devices. While integrations like Instagram checkout reduce friction at point of purchase, these platforms also serve as a place to build brand recognition through early customer touchpoints.

We all are addicted to our phones, I'm not sure how healthy it is, not for me to say, but take a look at photographs from the days before the 'mobile' was widely available and you would see pictures of people on the morning and evening commute reading a paper, primarily for the news and entertaining stories, but also to help fill in the journey time.

All those newspapers carried their 'advertisers' message, which they hoped would subliminally encourage us to buy the headache tablets, new tracksuit, investment package, insurance, or luxury holiday to 'Wales'. 

That's how the model worked, its how they tell you how they subsidise the cost of the newspaper, and with print media in significant decline what have they done?.

Ironically you bought (or got one free) that newspaper for the content, not the adverts, yet this is one key thing retailers looking for sales purchases seem to have missed.

The same advertising mentality has now carried itself across every single device we use today, but without really accounting for change in consumer behaviour.

If your lead strategy is to encourage a purchase on a mobile phone my guess is to have a good think about behaviour on that device can assist in that purchase. 

Commerce from content is what's driving huge results across many social platforms, Instagram being the obvious one. 

Is there a big clue in this behaviour?