Men leading the mobile commerce market

According to a recent study by Adobe, young men are currently the fastest adopters of mcommerce and other mobile tools. This research stands in contrast to what industry opinion, as many experts believed men would no longer dominate the early adopter role for digital media, eMarketer reports.

Adobe's study indicated that women are the most prolific users of social media through their mobile devices, but men use most other mcommerce tools more frequently.

Travel-related mcommerce is an area in which women are more competitive with men, but men still used the technology more often. While dealing with maps and other direction-finding tools, the divide was equal, but mcommerce features such as booking hotels, researching locations and other content-driven tasks were most often performed by men.

Using mcommerce as a tool to access content-driven is the central focus of men using mobile devices, the study said. Researching products, reading reviews, browsing stores and other similar tasks were ravenously devoured by the the male demographic of mcommerce users.

Another area of male-dominated growth came in the area of actually paying for content and mcommerce services. Many applications and other mobile tools tend to be free, or usable in trial versions. However, to fully enjoy many of the complex and sophisticated mobile commerce functions, users need to invest in applications. Adobe found men are significantly more willing than women to spend on these tools to facilitate their mcommerce efforts. Females were 11 percent more likely to have not made a mobile purchase in the past six months. Furthermore, 60 percent of men said they have spent more than $250 dollars through their mobile devices in the past year. Less than half of women made the same claim.

Last month, Adobe released a survey detailing specific trends while shopping online. The study found that most mcommerce buyers were spending to obtain entertainment, clothing and other consumer goods through their mobile devices. The survey also confirmed that mcommerce is likely to grow quickly.

"[The popularity of mobile websites] and other findings make it clear that companies can significantly enhance their customers’ mobile experiences and better drive mobile e-commerce revenue," said Brad Rencher, vice president and general manager of the Omniture Business Unit at Adobe. "Our customers are finding that an optimized mobile strategy, whether it consists of a website, an app, or a combination of both, can become a tremendous competitive advantage."

Overall, the study found that consumers are interested in using their mobile devices extensively for mcommerce. Users like to use both applications and mobile websites to browse their shopping options and are willing to spend money on entertainment for their mobile phones.