Shopping behaviors used to be far more predictable before the rise of Smartphones and tablets. Marketing and advertising companies had it down to a science, which went something like this: an item catches the shopper’s attention, they take an interest in it, decide they want it and then purchase it. The basic premise of the theory is that the further along in the process the customer goes, the more they desire the item, which drives them to the action of making the purchase.

Mobile technology burst onto the scene and shook up the way we consider what, why and how we want to buy things, and subsequently, how products need to be marketed. Smartphones give us immediate gratification: people to shop while they’re waiting on line, sitting in traffic or whenever they feel the urge.

So who are the mobile shoppers who will purchase items anytime, from anywhere? A July posting on Nielsen.com took a closer look at the demographics of mobile shoppers.

More than 80 percent of mobile users bought items on their devices as of the first quarter 2013. Nielsen also revealed that “more than a quarter” of shoppers use their mobile devices to make purchases more often than they use their computers.

Although women traditionally make most of the purchases for their families, men and women were evenly split when it came to shopping on mobile devices. Nielsen noted that the majority of these customers tend to be younger, more than half of those surveyed were under 45 years old and 34 percent were less than 34 years old.

These customers also have more money to spend. Thirty-five percent have incomes over $100,000. However, the category of shoppers with incomes of $50,000 or less is growing quickly, with more than half of mobile shoppers in lower-or-middle income brackets.