In-Store Cellphone E-Comerce Use Rockets, Threatens Retailers

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jan 30, 10:24AM EST

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Bricks-and-mortar stores have been concerned for some time that their shoppers would come to their stores, find products, and then go online to get the best prices. Store, in essence, has started to become showrooms, and not centers of commerce

To combat this, Target (NYSE: TGT). Walmart (NYSE: WMT), and Costco (NASDAQ: COST) have set programs to sell in-house brands which cannot be bought on websites like Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN). The decision to do this may have come just in time, but will not prevent cellphone-carrying shoppers from comparing prices on name brands.

New Pew research shows that more than 50% of shoppers are now armed with cellphones which they use while in stores.

According to Pew

More than half of adult cell phone owners used their cell phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions. During a 30 day period before and after Christmas:

•38% of cell owners used their phone to call a friend while they were in a store for advice about a purchase they were considering making

•24% of cell owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online while they were in a store

•25% of adult cell owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online while they were in a store, to see if they could get a better price somewhere else

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.