Smartphones allow us to answer our own product questions about options, specs and, of course, price while we’re out shopping. And Google is trying to figure out what that means for marketing and purchase decisions. Seventy-nine percent of smartphone owners are what Google calls “smartphone shoppers,” meaning that they use their at least once a month in stores. That’s a lot of people. If there are 130 million smartphone users in the U.S., then about 111 million Americans use their to prepare for or to look things up while there. It’s not surprising that Google wants to get in all those heads and see what’s going on. There’s money there! The Google Shopper Marketing Agency Council worked with M/A/R/C Research to assess what people are doing when they use their to get ready for or while in a store. During Q3 of 2012 they conducted qualitative studies to get a sense of overall trends and then used surveys completed by 1,500 smartphone users to cull data. The report only looked at how impact in-store purchasing and did not extend to people online on their smartphones.Read Full Story