Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies report that 1/4th of consumers have made a purchase using their smart phone. The use of smart phones to make purchases jumps to 41% for iPhone owners.

“Smartphones are a major part of the shopping experience for more than half of online Americans now, particularly Generation Y and even Gen Xers,” said Chris Neil, vice president of technology and telecom at Chadwick Martin Bailey, Boston. TWO THIRDS of smart phone owners under the age of 35 use them to make purchases!

Here’s the top three uses of smart phones among consumers:

1. Checking a price
2. Finding a store location
3. Verifying a supplier or product online.

Here’s the current top three types of apps being used by smart phone owners for enabling their purchases:

1. Bar code scanner
2. Price comparison
3. Product or supplier analysis.

This mega trend is huge for smaller and midsize companies because most of these businesses still don’t even have websites.

It is also a revolution for stores with physical locations. Merchants during the 2010 Christmas season reported that their floor associates were less informed about their store’s merchandise than their customers. That’s smart phones and the Internet in action on the sales floor! The use of smart phones QUADRUPLED in use compared to the prior Christmas season.

What does all of this mean in terms of selling green products?

First, that customers now have the ability to tell the difference between more sustainable products and less sustainable products. They have the ability to move past the product labeling to validate claims and see customer feedback while literally standing in front of the product.

Second, they have the ability to figure out value vs. least price. The price attached to the product on the shelf is loosing its power. Smart phone consumers are now increasingly using apps provided by sites like Good Guide to scan the product’s bar code to see how the product ranks in terms of its impact upon the health of the consumer and the environment.

The smart phone is creating a retailing revolution enabling customers to expand their value search to include health, safety and environmental impacts along with price in their procurement decisions. This smart phone revolution will propel green marketing.

Bill Roth is the founder of Earth 2017 that focuses upon the emerging smart, healthy and green economy. His book, The Secret Green Sauce, profiles best practices of businesses making money going green.

This represents a 170% increase in usage.

The savings generated by these coupons almost reached $1 billion.

Who’s using digital coupons? Here’s the top ten cities:

1. Atlanta
2. Tampa
3. Cincinnati
4. St. Louis
5. Minneapolis
6. Nashville
7. Charlotte
8. Cleveland
9. Pittsburg
10. Kansas City

The study found that Americans consume almost 12 hours of information per day! It breaks down like this:
• Television: 4.91 hours per day
• Computer: 1.93 hours per day
• Radio: 2.22 hours per day
• Computer games: 0.93 hours per day
• Phone: 0.73 hours per day
• Print: 0.60 hours per day
• Recorded music: 0.45 hours per day
• Movies: 0.03 hours per day

Another amazing conclusion from this study is that the United States consumes approximately 34 gigabytes per day or 3.6 zettabytes in all of 2008. (a zettabyte is 1,000 exabytes. A single exabyte is 1 million gigabytes)