Retailers Hate That You Buy Big Things on Your Laptop

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.