More people using cell phones in stores to aid shopping decisions

More than half of adult cell phone owners used their phones while they were in a store during the 2011 holiday season to seek help with purchasing decisions, the Pew Research Center reported today.

As part of a new study, the Pew Research Center Internet and American Life Project interviewed a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults living in the U.S. about their shopping habits over the course of a 30-day period before and after Christmas.

According to the study, 33 percent used their phone for online information while inside a brick and mortar store for either product reviews or pricing information. Online price matching and looking up online reviews frequently went hand in hand.

Here's a breakdown of how consumers used their cell phones as a shopping tool while in stores:

• 38 percent of cell phone owners used their phone to call a friend for advice about a purchase they were considering making.
  
• 24 percent of cell phone owners used their phone to look up reviews of a product online.
  
• 25 percent of adult cell phone owners used their phones to look up the price of a product online to see if they could get a better price somewhere else.

Perhaps not surprisingly, of those interviewed, cell phone owners age 18 to 49 were significantly more likely to use their phones to search for online product reviews, when compared to cell phone owners 50 and older.

The rise of in-store mobile commerce [Pew]

—Maggie Shader