Footfall is not any longer a guarantee of success for top street retailers, in line with research from Tradedoubler, which found that 60 per cent of connected consumers in Europe use their smartphones whilst out shopping. 

Of those, vitally, 75 per cent partake in ‘showrooming’, and use their mobile to peer up information on a product they see in a shop. 70 per cent check for a closer price elsewhere, and 60 per cent opting to purchase the product online hence.

The research also found that 92 per cent of connected consumers are making performance marketing apps and internet sites – including price comparison, voucher code and cashback sites – their first port of call when researching what to purchase, in preference to browsing at the high street.

“This is a wake-up demand marketers and high street retailers,” said Dan Cohen, Regional Director, Tradedoubler. “Retailers’ traditional metric – footfall – is now an irrelevant indicator of retail success and so they have got to embrace performance marketing strategies now that 51 per cent of mobile shoppers are seeking for vouchers or discounts for products they’ve got seen in-store and 44 per cent are using vouchers sent to their mobile. Retailers need defensive and offensive strategies to offer protection to and grow their revenues and indeed, to even remain relevant on this intense multichannel world.”

The research was in accordance with a survey of two,500 connected users – consumers who own a smartphone and who shop online once or more a month – within the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Netherland, Spain, Sweden and Poland.