Mobile shopping continues to grow with more than 110 million smartphone users in the U.S. and thousands of shopping apps available to consumers free of charge, according to PriceGrabber (www.pricegrabber.com), an online shopping comparison site.

As the holiday season approaches consumers are looking for ways to improve the shopping experience using mobile devices. PriceGrabber has released results of its second winter holiday survey, revealing how consumers plan to use mobile shopping applications this holiday season.

According to the survey, 31% of consumers already have shopping-related apps on their smartphone, and 82% of those consumers plan to use those apps to help save money when purchasing holidays gifts. With the ever-increasing shopping app marketplace, it's no surprise that 32% of respondents with smartphones said they plan to download new shopping apps in preparation for the upcoming 2012 holiday season. Conducted from Sept. 14 to Sept. 27, the survey includes responses from 2,469 U.S. online shopping consumers.

When consumers were asked what types of shopping apps they plan to download for holiday shopping, coupon apps were the most popular with 70% of the vote. This was closely followed by 66% of shoppers who said they will download comparison shopping apps; 63% plan to download price check apps with the ability to scan barcodes; and 54% of respondents will download apps dedicated specifically to searching Black Friday deals.

Forty-three percent of consumers plan to download deal-of-the-day apps from daily deal websites such as Groupon and Living Social; 32% selected price calculator apps to determine discounts, tax and total cost of purchases; and 30% plan to download a gift list app to manage their shopping lists.

"Instead of clipping coupons, shoppers are scouring the internet and turning to their mobile devices to find the best deals. Our survey data states that 82% of consumers who already have shopping-related apps will use them in an effort to save money when purchasing gifts this season," says Rojeh Avanesian, vice president of marketing and analytics of PriceGrabber. "With mobile shopping growing at a rapid rate, it will be interesting to see how retailers will gain the shoppers' attention in the competitive mobile market space this holiday season."

Consumers plan to purchase gifts at every price point from their mobile device
As tablets and smartphones have increased in popularity, shoppers are not only using their money-saving apps to compare prices and look for coupons, they plan to follow through with purchasing products at every price point. Forty-two percent of consumers said they plan to purchase both big- and small-ticket items with a mobile shopping app; 41% will purchase small-ticket items under US$100; 10% plan to purchase all of the holiday gifts on their list using shopping apps; and 7% will purchase big-ticket items over $100.

Saving money, time, or just for fun, holiday shoppers are turning to new shopping apps to complement their in-store buying this year. When PriceGrabber survey respondents were asked how many trips they plan to make to retail stores for holiday gift purchases this year, 45% of consumers said they plan to make the same amount of trips, 7% indicated more trips, and 48% said less trips this year.

Of those respondents, 57% of consumers said they plan to make between one and five trips to retail stores to purchase holiday gifts. Thirty-three percent plan to make six to 10 trips; 8% of shoppers plan to take 11 to 20 trips; and 2% plan to make more than 21 trips to brick and mortar stores.