San Franciscans lead the country in shopping while meeting — takin' care of business in a multitasking kind of way.
SOASTA, a cloud and mobile testing firm in Mountain View, surveyed people in 10 major cities across the country about using their smartphones to shop. Specifically, they asked when and where shoppers did the deed. San Franciscans handily beat out all other cities in shopping during a conference call (20 percent of us have) and during a meeting (23 percent guilty).
So if you think your co-worker is intently double-checking the stats you've got up in your Power Point on her smartphone, think again. She's probably scoring a pair of tickets for December's Macklemore & Ryan Lewis concert. Admittedly, most meetings are boring, and S.F. workers are highly skilled in doing multiple things at the same time without losing a beat.
Soasta's survey showed that in general, we're tops in mobile consumption: 75 percent of people in San Francisco have used their smartphones to shop, compared with 68 percent in Washington, D.C., and 67 percent in New York. (Mobile shopping has become increasingly popular — in 2012, people spent $25 billion on purchases made from phones and tablets, an increase of 81 percent from the year before, according to eMarketer.)
San Franciscans, however, don't buy stuff via phone while lamenting the passing of a dear one, as do our East Coast brethren: Six percent of New Yorkers say they've shopped by phone while at a funeral. Shocking.