Price checking by mobile phones on increase says BRC

The BRC said mobile and tablet search volumes rose by 113 per cent over the past three months.

It added that there are huge opportunities for food retailers to expand their internet businesses and this will be a big area of competition over the coming months.

Stephen Robertson, director general of the BRC, said: “For the first time, we can see searches from tablets are responsible for 40 per cent of all retail searches from mobile devices, a very substantial share.

“This reflects the growth in shoppers using tablets at home instead of a laptop or PC. Mobile searches overall are booming and the biggest growth area within that is for food and drink, showing smart consumers are increasingly using new devices to price check before buying their groceries.”

He said that around a fifth of all online spending is on food and drink but only four per cent of total grocery spending happens online.

“With non-food goods dominating online spending, there are huge opportunities for food retailers to expand their internet businesses and this will be a big area of competition in the coming months and years,” he predicted.

Peter Fitzgerald, Google’s retail director, said: “The second quarter of 2012 had lots of talking points and events – the weather, the Jubilee and the European Championships.

“Weather conditions negatively affected many retailers in April, but retail query growth in April was strong. This shows that people were still online and shopping.”

He said some of the top days for mobile queries were around the bank holidays.

“This demonstrates two central trends around mobile. First, the local trend – with so many people out and on the go we see mobile queries rise. Second, there is the trend of using mobile devices while watching TV. This drives up mobile queries around the bank holidays, which are big TV viewing days,” he added.

The footwear and health and beauty sectors showed the strongest growth rates for total retail search volumes.

Consumer electronics was the only sector that showed a decline in total search volumes. All other sectors saw double-digit growth.