WUA USA: Mobile Payments to Buy Mobile Devices?

What came first, the chicken, or the egg? That may sound like a non sequitur, but according to the results of a new study sent our way from WUA USA, it’s more than rhetorical now in the mobile payments field. We all know that mobile payments don’t tend to get very far without a mobile device, but the study finds that people are increasingly preferring online channels to buy their next smartphone.

The study found that, when it came to buying a new smartphone, Verizon’s online experience was the best around. Good news for Verizon, but for AT&T the news was much worse: its online experience is actually encouraging its customers to shop with someone else. While 28 percent of respondents identified AT&T as their current provider, AT&T’s website was preferred just by 16 percent.

The numbers get even more interesting from there; 70 percent of the participants in the study noted that online research was their biggest decision-making tool, while only 26 percent turned to in-store visits and telephone conversations. Four percent just made a decision “passively”. While the smartphone market itself is in decline—new customers are hard to find and smartphones actually last longer, prompting fewer sales.

The global head of telecommunications at WUA, Daan Tames, noted “…Not all websites have mastered the mobile experience yet, which is why there is such a range in digital sales performance in top wireless providers in the United States. Even when the digital channel is not the final place of purchase, consumers will decide online which company’s physical store they will go to confirm their decision in-person and walk away with a device immediately.”

Effectively, we see here that using a mobile device to buy a mobile device isn’t outlandish, and companies may wish to step up their mobile presence as well as their online performance accordingly. Sure, “online” isn’t just mobile; it’s also desktop and similar platforms. But with so much of shopping going online, it’s just good practice to augment the mobile experience, especially since that’s the device people are actively looking to replace.

So while there may not be a big rush to use mobile payments to buy the next mobile device, shoring up the mobile experience could well pay dividends.