Mobile Phones Are Changing Retail. Here's How. (Infographic) Consumers carry access to the Internet around in their pockets now -- and that's upending the rulebook for owners of brick and mortar stores.

By Catherine Clifford

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Shoppers have the Internet in their pockets. For store owners, that's changing the game.

Almost half of shoppers admit to having participated in "showrooming," or going into a retail store to look at a product and then buying a less expensive version online. That statistic comes from an infographic generated by MobStac, a cloud-based mobile-commerce platform that makes websites and applications for businesses.

Related: 10 Questions to Ask When Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Users

As a retail store owner, you can try to prevent consumers from using their smartphones inside your store. But that's not much more than putting a Band-Aid on a broken leg. Mobile shopping isn't going away.

Instead, retail store owners should engage with customers through mobile technology and give them what they want. Four out of five smartphone owners say they would prefer to be able to read more about products on their devices while shopping in stores, according to the MobStac infographic.

Related: Mobile Commerce Has Completely Exploded (Infographic)

Check out this infographic for more trends in mobile commerce and for ways to make your retail store smartphone-friendly.

Mobile Phones Are Changing Retail. Here's How. (Infographic)
Catherine Clifford

Senior Entrepreneurship Writer at CNBC

Catherine Clifford is senior entrepreneurship writer at CNBC. She was formerly a senior writer at Entrepreneur.com, the small business reporter at CNNMoney and an assistant in the New York bureau for CNN. Clifford attended Columbia University where she earned a bachelor's degree. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. You can follow her on Twitter at @CatClifford.

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