Moms: The Untapped Market for Mobiles

30 Mar Moms: The Untapped Market for Mobiles

Despite what you might be inclined to believe, research now shows that the largest untapped online market consists of mothers. They spent nearly $2 trillion last year on household expenses according to various sources. You’d think a group with so much purchasing power would be catered to immediately, but they remain one of the last markets left mainly untapped by the mobile revolution.

A recently released study done by BabyCenter of over 5,000 moms has revealed the following interesting data:

59% of the mom-respondents had a smart phone of one sort or other, which is impressive when you consider that smart phone penetration among the rest of the US population is just above 30%.

Additionally, moms’ acceptance of smart phones has grown dramatically over the past 2 years. Just over half of these moms said that they bought a smart phone after having a child, with their mobile behavior being markedly different from prior to starting a family.

The most utilized smart phone features for moms, from highest to lowest, are: the built-in still camera, the video camera, and applications, with just over half of the moms saying that they had over 10 apps downloaded, with nearly a quarter of those related in some way to their children.

Moms use smart phones the most in the following cases:

Health: One-third of moms have used their smart phone for family related health issues in the past 30 days.

Social networking: moms are 40% more likely than average to use smart phones for various social networking activities, such as browsing news feeds, updating statuses, and finding answers to questions.

Shopping: 68% of moms use their smart phone while shopping to check product reviews and prices.

Compared to other gadgets and media, smart phone-toting moms use their phones twice as often as the TV and about 1.5 times more than a PC.

Almost half of respondents indicated they responded proactively to ads on their phones, with almost a third of them buying the featured items later on.

Everybody else uses their phones heavily during evenings and weekends, but moms are heavy morning and early afternoons users.

While the focus of most mobile marketing has been on teenagers and young males, moms are now an emerging dominant force in this area of the market.