A recently carried out survey has suggested that the operators of Near Field Communication (NFC) were required to team up with grocery supermarkets such as Mark and Spencer, and Tesco, for having the best chance of enticing mobile phone consumers to test the new format.

According to the online poll that was conducted by Acxiom, a multi-channel marketing company, out of 17,000 responses recieved by it only one in five consumers in the United Kingdom was prepared to use NFC through their mobile phone for making purchase and payments.

The online survey also revealed five out of one UK mobile phone users out of the total respondents aspiring to accept targeted advertising and promotions direct to their mobile phones. This figure equates to approximately 6.8 million people of the 33 million in the United Kingdom that have subscribed to mobile phone deals.

Those people that are more likely to use the new technology, according to the personicx home consumer segmentation solution of Acxiom, tend to purchase at the local Sainsbury's, M and S, Tesco Metro and Waitrose.

These customers are predominantly married citizens coming within the age group of between 45 and 54, earning more than GBP 40,000 a year and senior or middle aged managers that may be running their own business.