With 97% of Mexico’s consumers now using smartphones, it’s a no surprise that merchants there are configuring shopping experiences catering to this mobile mindset.
In a nation where the nexus of shopping has shifted decidedly digital, we find a dialed-in approach to mobile commerce that assures greater engagement and drives higher sales.
The 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index: Mexico Edition, a Cybersource and PYMNTS collaboration, part of a six-nation study of more than 13,000 consumer in six countries, finds that Mexico is a mobile shopping standout in North America, which is no easy feat when being compared to the U.S. and Canada.
Which is not to say Mexico’s global shopping index score can’t be improved. Our study finds that “Shoppers in Mexico say they encounter 18% more shopping friction than the average consumer across all six countries in our study. Providing shopping features is not the end-all, be-all that our data suggest. Merchants must also invest in building rapport with their shoppers, ensuring they know the full extent of the shopping and payment features available.”
Here are key learnings from the Mexico edition, which includes responses from a targeted survey of nearly 2,140 Mexican consumers complementing the larger study.
Mexican consumers embrace mobile shopping
Data show that 41% of those shopping in physical stores in Mexico use smartphones to assist their journeys and 46% of consumers use their smartphones at some point during purchase.
And Mexican shoppers are 8% more likely to use a smartphone in a shopping excursion that may begin on a mobile app at home and is completed in store.
Our study also notes that "Brick-and-mortar shoppers in Mexico are 19% likelier than the average consumer across all six countries in our study to use their smartphones to enhance their in-store shopping experiences. The only two countries in which smartphone-assisted in-store shopping is more common are the UAE and Brazil, where 59% and 47% of in-store shoppers use mobile to aid their shopping experiences, respectively."
Merchants get the mobile memo
Part of the reason Mexico’s smartphone-carrying shoppers can shop smoothly is the work merchants there have done on mobile experience.
According to our study, 72% of Mexico’s merchants “allow consumers to use mobile apps to locate products in store or offer mobile apps for delivery and pickup, for example—more than in any other country we studied. Additionally, 68% of Mexican merchants offer real-time inventories, and 80% offer the ability to set up digital profiles—20% and 26% more than our sample average, respectively.”
We see similar scenarios playing out in places like Brazil, but not on the order of the shift observed in Mexico over the past year.
Mexican merchants are also likely to offer refund and return options, for example, “with 63% promising to refund digital purchases either online or in store. This makes merchants in Mexico 28% more likely than merchants across all six countries to offer such refund options.”
Friction remains a sticking point
Despite its advancements as a connected digital economy and the efforts of merchants to embrace smartphones, Mexico’s shopping experience is not without its issues.
Browsing and payments friction are the enemies of conversion, and our study finds that Mexican merchants still have work to do.
Mexican merchants received an average index score of 83, “meaning they offered the second-most friction-laden shopping experience of the six countries we studied. Only Australian consumers encounter more shopping friction, as Australian merchants earned a score of just 81. The lack of consumer awareness of available shopping features contributes significantly to this low score but there is also evidence to suggest that the quality of the digital shopping features that many Mexican merchants have adopted is lacking.”