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“Snacking” Consumers Use Mobile Devices to Revolutionize the Impulse Buy

April 21, 2024         By: Steven Anderson

Impulse buying used to be a fairly simple matter. A candy bar at the gas station, a magazine at the grocery store checkout, small things at the last minute.

Now, with mobile payments and mobile devices, it’s easier than ever to buy just about anything at any time of the day or night, and that’s giving rise to the “snacking” customer, a whole new way to look at impulse buying.

Snacking—the process of buying several small items throughout the day using a mobile device—is starting to find prevalence with the user base.

Consolidating purchases, and making smaller numbers of larger purchases all at once, is fallout out of fashion, and so too are the less-mobile devices like PCs and laptops being used to make said purchases. Customers are finding it quicker to pull out a mobile app, and shop accordingly.

Such purchases can cover just about anything; fashion app Spring CEO Alan Tisch notes that consumers out from bars after a night of drinking often make Spring their next stop, making purchases as they go.

While some might think the idea of buying clothes—or anything else—after a night of heavy drinking might be a bad idea, the point remains: the mobile device is always on hand and contributing to the desire to shop.

Since shopping has been known to produce something like a high for users, a feeling of well-being from seeing purchases arrive for enjoyment and use, the idea that users might select smaller purchases that arrive more frequently might maintain that shopper’s high, so to speak.

That’s the main function behind services like Bobcat In a Box, which allow users to engage in extremely low-priced auctions every day, sending a random item to a user’s house every day for one dollar.

It’s not out of line to extend this out to a new Blue-ray, or a new book, or a new piece of home décor. If anything, it’s a clear sign of high consumer confidence.

Mobile devices have changed the landscape in a lot of ways, from work to play, and shopping is rapidly changing as well.

Even the impulse buy isn’t safe, and as customers feel more comfortable making purchases from mobile devices, that should result in a lot of benefit for online shopping venues that work well with mobile.