Mobile Wallet Adoption Not Contingent upon Mobile Payment Technology, New Research Reveals

CHICAGO, Aug. 22, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Vibes, a mobile marketing technology leader, today published its first annual Vibes Mobile Wallet Consumer Report, providing retailers with guidance about how to connect with today's mobile consumers and enhance the multichannel shopping experience. As both the mobile and retail industries struggle to implement mobile payments, consumers have made their preference clear – a mobile wallet that eliminates the need for paper items (e.g., coupons and loyalty cards) and expedites the check-out process at their favorite retailers. For retailers, this fast consumer adoption reveals the untapped potential of the non-payment side of the mobile wallet.

Key Findings

• For 59 percent of consumers, their perception of a retailer would change – for the better – if they started to deliver digitized mobile wallet content such as special offers and loyalty cards
• For non-users, the top reasons to try a (non-payment) mobile wallet tool are better promotions/offers (50 percent,) followed by organizing content such as coupons and loyalty cards (43 percent)
• 44 percent of non-users claim a (non-payment) mobile wallet tool would enhance their shopping experience
• You don't need an app to deliver mobile wallet content: Apps actually come in third as the channel consumers prefer to receive mobile wallet content (19 percent) behind text message (20 percent) and email (46 percent)
• Adoption is quite even across income levels – 26 percent for consumers with incomes higher than $100K, 21 percent for those between $75K-$99K, 25 percent for $50K-$74K and 28 percent for those making less than $50K
• More than one third of consumers (36 percent) claim they use their mobile phone to shop in store more today than they did two years ago – citing this as the biggest shift in their overall shopping experience  

"This research confirms what we've been seeing in the mobile wallet campaigns we have run for our retail customers – a consumer's phone is more than just a research tool," said Jack Philbin, co-founder and CEO of Vibes. "With emerging mobile wallet technologies such as Apple's Passbook and Google Wallet Objects, consumers are able to organize their phones in a way that works for them. Information is delivered based on their preferences, creating a huge opportunity for retailers to not only offer a mobile wallet program, but better educate their customers on how to sign up and reap the benefits."

To view the complete findings, visit www.vibes.com/mobilewallet. Vibes will also share key findings of this report during a webinar Thursday, Sept. 5, at 2 p.m. EDT. Register for the webinar here: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/396337599.

Methodology
The Vibes Mobile Wallet Consumer Report was fielded by independent panel research firm Equation Research and responses were generated from a survey among 1,000 smartphone owners from their online opinion panel. All respondents are age 18 or older and living in the continental United States. The margin of error for the survey is +/-3.1 percent.

About Vibes
Founded in 1998, Vibes is a mobile marketing technology leader that helps some of the world's biggest brands acquire, engage and deepen relationships throughout the customer lifecycle. Vibes' Catapult mobile relationship management (MRM) platform enables brands, agencies and media companies to launch a wide range of mobile solutions. Vibes integrated mobile wallet capabilities into Catapult right when Apple introduced Passbook in September 2012 and has been at the forefront of the non-payment side of mobile wallet ever since. Recently named a "Cool Vendor in Mobile Marketing" by Gartner Research, the company has delivered more than 3 billion mobile experiences on behalf of customers that include Sears, Verizon, Allstate, The Gap, Tribune, Fox, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Gannett and the Chicago Bulls. Vibes is one of only seven Tier 1 aggregators with secure, direct connections to all the major carriers. To learn more about Vibes, visit www.vibes.com or connect on Facebook.com/VibesMedia or Twitter.com/Vibes_Media.

SOURCE Vibes