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Warc (@WarcEditors) reports on a new study by Google and Ipsos OTX MediaCT that says smartphone use is increasingly influencing US consumers’ media use and shopping habits.

• 93% of smartphone owners use the devices at home.
• 87% use it “on the go” (77% in stores, 73% in restaurants, 72% at work).
• 59% log on to the mobile Web while waiting in line, 48% do so as they eat, 44% during shopping trips, and 43% while travelling.
• 81% say they’ve browsed the mobile Internet in the last week, 77% used search engines, 68% used apps, and 48% played back video.
• 72% engage in simultaneous media use involving smartphones and other mainstream channels at some point. This includes 33% watching TV at the same time as using the wireless Web, 29% also going online through a PC, 27% for gaming, and 22% for reading print media.
• 82% employ email services on their phone and 63% visit social networks.
• 82% research and read news, 75% exploit navigation tools, 65% enjoy entertainment content, and 45% manage their finances, social life, or travel arrangements.
• 46% of participants use ecommerce sites, 43% view video-sharing portals, 38% visit general consumer websites, and 26% go to official brand platforms.
• 79% use their handsets for commercial purposes. Some 78% locate retailers, compare prices, or search store inventories, and 69% seek out product information, such as by scanning a barcode, watching online video, or reading reviews.
• 52% contact a retailer, 40% source coupons, and 28% redeem virtual discount vouchers.
• Within the 74% of individuals claiming to have previously made purchases because of using a smartphone, 76% bought goods at a brick-and-mortar outlet and 59% did so from a PC. 35% snapped up a product straight from their phone, 27% looked to mobile websites, and 22% turned to apps for the same reason.
• Where people bought goods through a smartphone, the average annual expenditure hit $300, with 48% of relevant consumers buying entertainment items, as electronics and apparel both secured 45%.
• Conducting research on a smartphone and then buying in-store remains the most common path to purchase, with 67%, but 9% of respondents had taken the opposite route.
• Elsewhere, 23% undertook investigations on a wireless device and then a brick-and-mortar store before completing transactions on the Web.
• A further 16% researched and purchased on a phone, with a trip to a store sandwiched in the middle.
• Having been asked to describe mobile advertising formats they could recall, 45% of those polled referenced banners and graphical ads, and 43% mentioned executions on a website they had viewed.
• A 35% share remembered ads embedded in apps, standing at 34% for paid-search listings, 28% for SMS, and 21% for video and location-based alternatives.

See the research report, “The Mobile Movement,” in full (pdf).

Let Somersault help you strategize your mobile publishing future.

Business Insider (@alleyinsider) highlights charts from a 115-page report on the state of the tablet market by Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. “The tablet industry is set to explode this year and next, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. He expects Apple and the iPad to be the biggest winner, but Samsung is looking like the strongest no. 2 right now.”

Compare book reading with other media consumption on tablets vs. computers:

See the charts.

Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Tablet Users Buy/Browse Online More than Smartphone Users.”

And MobileBeat’s (@VentureBeat) “New York Public Library brings history to your fingertips with Biblion for iPad.”

The New York Times article, “Retailers Offer Apps With a Catalog Feel” tells how new apps are turning tablets into digital catalogs.

Are you publishing content for the tablet market? Let Somersault help.

According to Amazon.com’s (@amazon) list of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America, Cambridge, MA is at the top for the most books, magazines, and newspapers purchased per capita of any city in the United States. After compiling reading material sales data in both print and Kindle (@AmazonKindle) format since Jan. 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents, the cities are:

1. Cambridge, MA                11. Knoxville, TN

2. Alexandria, VA                 12. Orlando, FL

3. Berkeley, CA                    13. Pittsburgh, PA

4. Ann Arbor, MI                    14. Washington, DC

5. Boulder, CO                      15. Bellevue, WA

6. Miami, FL                          16. Columbia, SC

7. Salt Lake City, UT             17. St. Louis, MO

8. Gainesville, FL                  18. Cincinnati, OH

9. Seattle, WA                       19. Portland, OR

10. Arlington, VA                    20. Atlanta, GA

Read the news release in full.

Do you tend to read at least one review of a book before purchasing it?

Web consultant, blogger, and author Tim Challies (@challies) surveyed his readers to find out where they buy Christian books and why they buy the books where they do. More than 1,800 people completed the survey; 67% of the respondents were male; 82% lived in the USA; 88% identified themselves as Reformed in theology. His conclusions:

First, Christian bookstores are barely competing with one another; they are competing together against Amazon. Even in a relatively niche market Amazon is dominant. Of course books are popular and even a small share of the market is significant, so those Christian bookstores can still make a go of it. But they need to fight this perception that Amazon offers the best prices.

Second, if we are truly committed to good prices, we should shop carefully and compare pricing before hitting the “checkout” button at Amazon. Unless there are other reasons to buy from Amazon (we are Prime members; we want to buy other items at the same time), we should look carefully at the Christian e-commerce stores to see if they offer better pricing.

Third, Christian bookstores need to maintain (or increase) their commitment to ebooks. The market is heading in that direction and the stores will need to be certain that they do not miss their opportunity. The big challenge, of course, is that Kindle owners will almost always get their books from Amazon; the most popular device has pretty much guaranteed that you will also use it to buy your books.

See all the charts in full.

According to the US Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau), the US population is 308,745,538. And it says the exact midpoint of America’s population has now moved to Plato, Missouri. Researchers determine the country’s center as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless, and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight. CNN (@CNN & @cnnbrk) reports the news this way:

Plato is a quaint and rural place in a nation that, according to the 2010 Census, is becoming less so, as more people move to urban areas, especially the suburbs and exurbs.

Forget big-city lights and traffic jams. Here, you can drive through town in 1 minute and 9 seconds, going the speed limit of 40 mph. On that drive, you’ll pass two churches, several fields of horses, a post office, a school, and five businesses....

...Plato feels different from other places, too. No one here is in a hurry. It’s a place where people still use “visit” as a verb that refers to the act of chatting with neighbors for hours on end with absolutely nothing pressing to discuss. People here get “tickled” by things like fishing, baseball games, turkey hunts, town gossip, and wading in the local streams....

...Plato very well may be stuck in a Norman Rockwell painting that the rest of us decided to toss in the garage decades ago. But this tiny community is more central to 2011 America than it might seem. America sometimes wishes it were a little more like Plato....

Read this in full.

Average people in average, America. How are you publishing and marketing to meet their needs?

MobileMarketingWatch (@MobileMW) reports on the findings of a new Greystripe (@Greystripe) study that says better than 66% of moms are plugged into their mobile devices while engaged in the act of shopping:

• 57% search for mobile coupons via their mobile device.
• 45% of connected moms use their smartphone to locate stores.
• 36% utilize some form of price comparison app or service.
• 31% use their smartphones to research products, read reviews, and check product availability.
• 91% prefer free apps with ads over paid apps without ads.

Read the MMW report.

Also see our April 14 blog post, “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”

And see Marketing Charts' "1 in 3 Smartphone Shoppers Often Accesses In-store Coupons."

What are you doing to publish content that will reach these moms? Let Somersault help.

Trendwatching.com (@trendwatching) has coined “The F-FACTOR” to describe the power and reach social media has on commerce and branding.

• The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as over 500 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
•  And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
• The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)
• Three-quarters of Facebook users have 'Liked' a brand. (Source: AdAge/ Ipsos, February 2011)

Here are 5 ways the F-FACTOR influences consumption behavior:

1. F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks.
2. F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks.
3. F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
4. F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together.
5. F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services.

Read further explanation of the above points.

Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Consumers Tap into ‘F-Factor’”

Keep in mind, according to a March 2011 survey by RetailMeNot.com and Harris Interactive, search engines are still the most popular online means of finding deals (67%), outpacing retailer emails/ads (30%), coupon websites (23%), and price comparison sites (22%).

Let Somersault help you optimize the F-FACTOR for your brand.

Publishing’s competitors are not only other books vying for consumers’ time and attention. Average Americans have increased their TV watching by 2 minutes, to 34 hours, 39 minutes per week, according to State of the Media, Trends in TV Viewing—2011 TV Upfronts (pdf) from The Nielsen Company.

Heaviest TV watchers are adults 65+ (47 hours, 33 minutes per week), followed by 50-64 (43 hours, per week). Trailing all other age groups, teens age 12-17 watch the least amount of TV (23 hours, 41 minutes per week).

Emerging trends:

·       Timeshifting continues to be a significant factor in how consumers watch TV. 38% of all TV households in the USA have a DVR.

·         Mobile Video viewing has increased 41% from last year. The heaviest users of mobile video are teens ages 12-17 who watch 7 hours 13 minutes of mobile video a month.

·         Viewing video online also continues to increase. In January 2011, 144 million Americans viewed video online.

·        The audience overlap between visitors to network and broadcast media sites and social networking & blog sites is significant. In January 2011, 49% of social networking & blog site visitors also visited TV network and broadcast media sites

Read this article.

The above presentation by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project (@Pew_Internet) explores 9 commonly held assumptions about how teens and young adults use technology:

1.    Everyone uses the Internet.

2.    Every teen has a cell phone.

3.    All teens text unimaginably large numbers of messages a day.

4.    Teens no longer call anyone on the phone.

5.    Parents and K-12 schools struggle with management of teens’ phones.

6.    Teens have been supplanted by older adults on social networks.

7.    Teens love Twitter.

8.    Young adults don’t care about privacy, particularly online.

9.    Teens are active creators of content online.

See this presentation in full.

Four in 10 US consumers interact with retailers through social networking sites, according to a new survey from Deloitte (@DeloitteBA). Data from the 2011 Spring Consumer Pulse Survey (pdf) also indicate out of this consumer subset, 63% interact to find out about promotions and 56% browse products on retailer social networking pages. In addition, 38% of shoppers who interact with retailers through social networking sites review recommendations. And 43% of smartphone owners surveyed say they've used devices in stores to assist in their shopping.

Read the article in full.

These statistics reinforce the strategy of using QR codes on product packaging or in-store merchandising to communicate with consumers. But how you do it makes all the difference. In his MobileInsider column, Steve Smith critiques brands’ mobile marketing from a real-world perspective in the article Down the QR Code Rabbit Hole.

[I pull out my phone] in the aisles of Barnes and Noble [to click a QR code:] a Microsoft Tag was on back of an historical thriller Stardust that looked intriguing. Again, it kicked me over to a very attractive trailer — that wanted to go on for 7 minutes. Seven minutes! “Stop that,” my fiancée said. “Would you bring a TV to watch in the middle of a bookstore?” Worse, am I really going to sit in a bookstore and watch a 7-minute video in order to find out what the book is about?

Read this article in full.

You’ll also want to read The New York Times article, “Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Mobile Shopping.”

Let Somersault help you create an effective mobile strategy for your brand.