User centred opportunities for supporting consumer behaviour through handheld and ubiquitous computing

Moving around our physical environment, we are surrounded and interact with information that exhorts and stimulates us to buy things. For most of us, not all of these impulses are followed: products may be too expensive, too hard to understand, similar to a product we already own, or other reasons. Developments in technological infrastructures are allowing users to access contextually relevant information to support more informed purchasing decisions and access to m-commerce services for in-the-moment acting upon those impulses. However, this work has emphasised the functional and transactional aspects of consumer behaviour, and largely ignores the experiential nature of such behaviour. As a response, we present a study examining the reasons why purchasing impulses are deferred. Results are used to inform thinking and motivate design solutions for new mobile consumer services and technologies.