Best Year Ever!
The results of this holiday season are topping the charts for online spending. Certainly direct-to-consumer retailers had similar success. Here are some interesting data points…
According to comScore, Inc., spending reached $18 billion for the season, up some 18 percent versus last year. Some of the important aspects contributing to this success were in great part, especially successful marketers allocated adequate search budgets to capture heavy e-commerce activity to focus on the online-to-offline connection. DoubleClick Performics research reports that 70 percent of respondents said they search before making any online purchase; 57 percent do so before making any offline purchase, and 64 percent use search engines to find out where to purchase products offline. Most offline holiday shopping happens on the weekends, but not everyone buys in the stores. Many go online during the week to purchase what they did not find over the weekend, price-check with competitors, and pursue deep online discounts and deals. Some of the reasons for the increase in e-commerce include free shipping, gift-wrapping and overnight delivery. It was also reported that shoppers who saw products on television ventured online to investigate the products they saw advertised. Forrester Research reports that free shipping offered a tangible lift in sales, with 61 percent of their respondents saying they bought online as a result of free shipping. And finally, Forrester’s research showed that consumers were willing to pay for extras such as gift-wrapping or overnight delivery—both of which increased online shopping.
Are these findings in line with your experience?
Sigi Friedman is ERA’s vice president of board and strategy
Tags: ERA, holiday sales, sigi friedman