Compete, a Kantar Media company, has released the findings of its quarterly online shopper intelligence study that tracks cross-channel shopping behavior; it shows how mobile devices are bridging the gap between online and offline shopping.

Smartphones help consumers shop smarter

Smartphone owners are increasingly bringing their devices to the store. This finding is corroborated by the most recent Compete Smartphone Intelligence Survey, which showed that 56 percent of smartphone owners used their devices to check the price of an item online and 48 percent looked at consumer-generated reviews. Forty-nine percent have downloaded a shopping app to use while shopping in a store.

The survey also revealed that barcode scanning is rapidly gaining popularity among shoppers. More than half of consumers who have used barcode scanning report they did so to compare prices of the product at other stores. Grocery items were the most frequently scanned product category. Books, DVDs and video games came in a close second.

Buying household items and groceries online still not catching

Despite consumer comfort with barcode scanning while shopping, actually purchasing household items and groceries online is another story. While the gap is narrowing with some items such as books (45.9 percent online vs. 33.8 percent offline), there is a significant gap when it comes to household essentials (84.9 percent offline vs. 10.9 percent online) and groceries (87.6 percent offline vs. 10.1 percent online).

Online research prior to purchasing still predominates

Consumers now rely heavily on pre-purchase online research before heading to the store. Today, 70 percent of consumers are "likely" or "very likely" to research a product online before making an in-store purchase.

The 4Q report was compiled from a survey of 2,871 online purchasers between 24 January and 8 February 2011.