Mobile shopping in Vietnam has thrived with growth in the number of consumers shopping by smartphone ranking 5th in the Asia-Pacific region after Malaysia, Taiwan, New Zealand and India, according to a recent survey of MasterCard.

MasterCard announced the results based on interviews done between October and December 2014 with a minimum of 500 respondents aged 18-64 in each of the 14 surveyed markets. They included Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, India and Philippines.

The survey showed Vietnam ranked 8th in terms of the ratio of consumers shopping by mobile phone. However, the country recorded the 5th highest growth in the region, with the percentage of consumers making at least a purchase through their smartphone in the past three months expanding from 39.4% in 2013 to 45.2% in 2014.

Overall, Chinese (70.1%), Indian (62.9%) and Taiwanese (62.6%) consumers are most likely to make purchases by smartphone. Nearly half of the respondents across Asia-Pacific (49.5%) considered convenience the most convincing reason for smartphone shopping. Other motivating factors are the ability to shop on the go (43.9%) and the growing emergence of apps supporting online shopping (39.5%).

The most popular mobile shopping items in Asia-Pacific are clothing and accessories (27.9%), followed by apps (21.2%) and daily deal coupons (19.2%). More than one third of consumers in China (37.4%) and Korea (36.0%) use smartphones for clothing and accessories shopping. Meanwhile, apps top the list of items Thai (33.8%) and Vietnamese (31.8%) shoppers purchased by smartphone.

Consumers also use smartphones to compare prices between physical and online stores as well as conduct online research before making an actual in-store purchase.