Consumers prefer smartphones to going to shopping centres

SMARTPHONES have for the first time overtaken shopping centres as a popular way to shop, figures show.

Shoppers are planning to spend £25 billion using their smartphones this year in what will be a £10billion rise on 2018, switching firm uswitch found.

More than 30million Brits (58 per cent) will use smart devices to shop this year, an increase of 12 million compared to 2018, it found.

This compares to 56 per cent of peo- ple who will visit a shopping centre this year.

Meanwhile, fewer people are visiting shopping centres, with separate data from BRC Springboard showing that footfall declined by 3.9 per cent in December, despite shops offering huge discounts.

It comes as the popularity of smartphone and tablet shopping is being driven by convenience, created by payment facilities such as Apple Pay, which let shoppers spend money in a single click.

Shoppers are also being tempted by links and adverts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

One in every five pounds spent in shops now comes via online payments, with the figure rising every year.

Shoppers told uswitch they liked shopping on a smartphone because they could do so at any time, while easily comparing prices and seeing a superior level of choice.

Clothes are by far the most popular product bought online (69 per cent of shoppers have done so), ahead of books (51 per cent), groceries (47 per cent) and theatre or cinema tickets (43 per cent).

Ru Bhikha, mobiles expert at uswitch, says: “For so many of us now, our smartphone is an extension of our hand and we have it with us at all times, meaning that we can shop whenever and wherever we like.

“Our handsets allow us to windowshop all the time, and if we see something we like, it is right there at our fingertips.

“With smartphone and tablet shopping now a £25 billion industry, it’s hardly surprising that for a long time major retailers have adopted a mobilefirst approach to their websites, and have even introduced their own apps to make the user experience as easy as possible.

“Cleaner user-journeys and the ease of one-click purchasing will only add to the number of people shopping on their phones and tablets.”