Consumers increasingly rely on their smartphones to transact everything from shopping to researching goods and services to paying for purchases. In the U.S., 85% of the adult population owns a smartphone, according to Statista, and there are more than 294 million smartphone users in the nation. With a 74% audience reach, YouTube dominates Statista’s list of the most popular smartphone apps, followed by Facebook at 65%, Google Maps at 57%, Gmail at 56% and Google Search at 54%.

When it comes to searching for things like the nearest gasoline station, Google Maps and Google Search are U.S. consumers’ go-to utility apps that power their need for information on-demand.

Results from the 2021 NACS Convenience Voices survey conducted July 16 to August 1, 2021, indicate that convenience store shoppers overwhelmingly use their mobile phones when looking up information on the go.

NACS asked consumers in its syndicated mobile shopper insights program to indicate what digital device they used to search for products, services and locations. Of the 852 consumers surveyed, 76.2% said they used a mobile phone, while 9.2% said they used a car navigation system and 3.6% said they used a voice-activated onboard car navigation system. When fuel-only purchasers were surveyed, the percentages were similar (74.4%, 9.3% and 3.4%, respectively).

What’s interesting to note is that of the shoppers surveyed while they were on the premises of a convenience store or gas station, 1 out of 5 said they ended up at that particular site as a result of a digital product search. For fuel-only customers, 1 out of 4 said a digital search led them to the location. In the NACS Time to Shop study, 93% of consumers surveyed reported that they live within 10 minutes of a convenience store, but 21% of customers are still selecting sites based on digital search.