Retailers Hate That You Buy Big Things on Your Laptop
People often prefer bigger screens and keyboards for pricier purchases—but merchants have more levers to pull on mobile
4 min
Shoppers want to make significant purchases on their laptops. Retailers really want them to do more on their phones.
Lately, the retailers are winning more often.
Mobile e-commerce has for years been hailed as the future of shopping . Online shops as well as airlines and hotels have upgraded and pushed apps or mobile-optimised websites as a way to get our attention—and access to our wallets. By using push notifications , mobile-only deals and other levers, vendors can tempt customers to make quick, unplanned purchases.
It’s finally working, as this past holiday season was the first time mobile-revenue share surpassed desktop, reaching 61% on Christmas Day, according to data from Adobe .
But that increase masks what shoppers say they want, particularly when it comes to large purchases. They often call these “big-screen purchases”—shopping done on computers. You might not like a retailer’s app or mobile website. You might prefer a web browser with extensions that track coupons or price changes. You might just want a second window open to check a calendar or a map.
And the laptop’s extra friction makes shoppers more careful: Many people say they have moved too fast on a phone, accidentally buying the wrong plane tickets.
As more companies amp up their mobile offerings to lure more shoppers away from their laptops, it’s good to be aware of the differences, especially if it could mean saving money.
Highflying purchase
Amanda Natividad, a 38-year-old vice president at a Los Angeles marketing startup, says she always opens her laptop before making a purchase.
She uses browser extensions to search for coupons and maximise credit-card benefits. It’s also easier for her to fill in her credit-card information with her computer in front of her and her password manager on hand, she says. And she can more easily double-check her calendar when booking flights.
“It’s just an old ingrained behaviour,” Natividad says. “It’s a flight, better use my computer for this.”
Many people tend to be on their phones while they’re distracted or in transit, but they use their computers when they’re at home or in the office, making it easier to focus, says Tim Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
“If you’re thinking about taking a vacation, early on you might be browsing through lots of different options and thinking generally about all the wonderful places you can go,” he says. “It is a very different mindset when you’re ready to spend thousands of dollars on booking the actual trip.”
Chasing convenience
Sarah Baicker, a 39-year-old content-marketing and communications manager in Washington Crossing, Pa., feels comfortable using her phone for almost every task or purchase, especially now that she’s chasing around a 2-year-old daughter. She booked a flight on the JetBlue app on New Year’s Day when she realised some credits were expiring.
“Sometimes it’s more annoying to make a purchase on a phone—that doesn’t bother me,” Baicker says. “I’m not bothered by a little bit of extra work for the sake of the convenience of not having to track down a secondary piece of technology.”
Companies have worked to make mobile purchases even easier. Services such as Apple Pay, Google Pay or Shop Pay automatically add in our billing and shipping information to our orders. If we’re shopping in an app, we’re usually already logged in and don’t have to dig up our credentials. (These are also available on laptop browsers, but they function smoothly within many mobile apps and shopping websites.)
Mobile shopping also scratches an itch for consumers who are scrolling their social-media feeds, with endless posts and stories shilling products to buy. When it comes to impulse shopping, 48% of people are likely to do so on a phone, compared with 19% on a laptop and 10% on a desktop, according to Slickdeals, a website that tracks sales and coupons.
The convenience factor seems to be working for many companies. In 2023, people shopped for flights on the United Airlines app 123 million times, a 23% increase from the year before, says a United spokeswoman. On Airbnb , 54% of total nights booked last quarter were done on the app, up from 49% booked during the same period a year ago, the company reported in its most recent quarterly earnings.
HotelTonight, which is owned by Airbnb, has long been a mobile-first company, with more than 90% of bookings happening on the app, and with some deals only available on mobile, says Ron Sandel, general manager of HotelTonight.
“At the end of the day, we’re a last-minute booking app. If you’re booking on the go—like so many of our users often are—you’re not pulling your laptop out to do that,” Sandel says.
A wider view
Though mobile shopping is becoming more popular, it still can’t make up for a bigger screen.
Logan Medeiros, a 23-year-old lifestyle and beauty content creator in Montreal, always pulls up her laptop to make a large purchase—such as her latest trip to Vancouver, Canada. The bigger screen makes it easier to open multiple tabs to compare hotels and flights.
That extra display real estate also prompts her to use her laptop for other purchases, such as buying clothes.
And more-mindful shoppers use their laptops to prevent impulse buys.
Alexander Lewis, a 31-year-old ghostwriter for tech companies and executives in Austin, Texas, set rules for himself to follow before buying anything online, such as mostly purchasing on a laptop and waiting at least a day before making the final call.
He says when he gets back to his cart, he often wonders whether he actually wants to read a book or own an article of clothing he saved.
“Having the internet always around us is an easy way to mindlessly spend our attention and also spend our money,” Lewis says.
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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