Supermarkets weep as phones foil impulse buys
This story must fill every village shop owner with poor mobile connectivity with cheer! It tells us:
You know that magic moment at the supermarket checkout when you suddenly decide you want to buy some gum, chocolate, or a copy of Cosmopolitan?
No? Probably because you’re staring at your smartphone. Known as the “mobile blinder”, data released last Thursday by the Alliance for Audited Media show that impulse buying at the till is suffering as customers opt to whip out their phones instead.
This is happening to such an extent that in the US single-copy sales of magazines dropped by 9.5 per cent last year.