Coupons, Web Site Visits, Catalogs & Online Circulars Are The Most Influencial Ad Vechicles For Driving Multi-Channel Shoppers In-Store

Here is some very recent data released (eg aggregated) by eMarketer. Of particular interest was the influence that online newspaper ads had on in store purchases. Notice that it is one of the strongest drivers of multi-channel shopping. Also interesting, but not surprising, was the ever declining affect that newspaper print ads have



Along with the same study, eMartker also tried to shed some light on whom exactly these multi-channel consumers are. It appears that it is the typical online user - male, younger with a higher income.

(Yawn) - Yet Another Study That Shows How Online Research Impacts Offline Sales

This was a clip from a press release that went out on 7/10/07. Within it are a number of data points that exactly line up with other studies. The interesting thing to me is, as more research is done and released it all tells the same exact story. That to me is powerful, as often times research can widely vary. Having so many reputable sources all tell the same story and predict the same impact and growth rates is amazing.

According to new research from Yahoo! and ChannelForce, consumers who search online for televisions and digital cameras spend ten percent more when making their purchase in-store than those who did not use a search engine. The survey also found that a vast majority research products online prior to making in-store purchases, and that online research is helping consumers make key purchasing decisions before they enter a store.

Key findings include:

• Seventy five percent who researched their purchases before visiting a retail location used the Internet as their primary source of information. The leading online resources were retail Web sites (73 percent), manufacturer websites (68 percent) and search engines (49 percent).
• Those who search spend an average of $31 more on digital cameras and $46 more on digital camera packages; and an average of $139 more on TVs and $190 on TV packages.
• More than 80 percent of consumers who research before making a purchase end up buying a brand from their original consideration set. The remaining 20 percent said the in-store sales person was highly influential in their decision.
• About 75 percent of people did not know the model they wanted when they walked into a retail store.

David Rubinstein, senior director, Yahoo! Search Marketing, says "This study confirms and quantifies that a more informed consumer is a more valuable consumer... "

Kurt Higgins, president, ChannelForce, noted "... the brand experience begins well before the shopper walks into the store, and this study confirms how critical the in-store experience is to the consumer's decision..."

The Power Of Online + Offline Media = Print + Web

Within the top 25 US markets (eg NYC, LA, Chicago, etc..) and looking at a target audience segment of people that are over the age of 18 years old, print + online reaches about 47.5 million people in total. By including online in this total reach calculation, the advertiser is able to reach an additional 16% (or about 6.6 mill). So here is the big money question of the day. Why are not all print buys augmented by an additional 16% that is earmarked for online spending?

The Aggregated Power Of Local Online Sites

This simple chart from ComScore MediaMetrix (April 2007) really struck me. Out of all of the super large publishers on the web, local publishers (as an aggregate) are the 7th largest online audience. It's fun to be part of a bigger movement. I'm proud to be driving this local publisher rank.

Some Insights Into The Total Size Of The Local Online Advertising Business

Here is a small tidbit that Borrell Associates, Inc. released in 2007...



And from the same firm and study, here is the forward looking outlook as it relates to local online advertising growth rates, extending out until 2010...

Comparrisons Between US & Europe Consumer Multi-Channel Behavior

Here is a nice summary that one of our great analyst here at ShopLocal put together (thanks Chris!) of the recent Forrester teleconference that was held on Monday June 25, 2007. The topic was The State of MultiChannel Shoppers in The US and Europe and it was lead by Tamara Mendelsohn.

• European consumers are making the move to multichannel shopping
  • By 2011, 54% European consumers (16 and older) will shop online
• Consumers using the internet for their shopping
  • 79% of US online consumers researched products online during the past 3 months
  • 87% of European online consumers researched products online during the past 3 months
  • 57% of US online consumers purchased products online during the same period
  • 53% of European online consumers purchased products online during the same period
• Online Consumer Demographics
  • European
    • Females now 50% of market from 37% more than 4 years ago
    • Younger than the US counterpart; down from 39 to 37
    • 62% are using broadband
  • US
    • 55% female from 47% over 4 years ago
    • Average age has climbed from 43 to 45
    • 55% are using broadband
• Web shoppers in Europe tend to be newer to the internet than the US counterpart.
  • 53% of EU web buyers have been purchasing online less than 2 years
  • 28% of US web buyers have been purchasing online less than 2 years
• 51% of US online consumers are cross-channel shoppers (research online purchase offline last 3 months)
• 57% of EU online consumers are cross-channel shoppers (research online purchase offline last 3 months)
• Consumer electronics is the top cross-channel category in the US (ranked by purchases)
• Apparel is the top cross-channel category in the EU; CE is the 3^rd category
• www.Argos.co.uk has taken several of the successful US tactics and applied it to their retail site
• Recommendations
  • Cross-channel trends both in US and EU continue to prove a need for the SL business model
    • Eventual entrance into the EU market seems to be the next logical step
  • Inventory management is growing increasingly more important to cross-channel shoppers
  • The potential up-sell when cross-channel consumers purchase offline averages over $150/shopping trip
    • Retailers would rely on CSE’s or Local players to drive in-store traffic both here and abroad

Updates On Walmart's Site To Store (S2S) Program

Here are a few quick facts that were 'published' at the Internet Retailer 2007 expo by a top Wal-Mart exec...

1. 2/3 of all (web) site to store shoppers were already in a (physical) Wal-Mart store weekly.
2. Sales through this program have doubled since it's introduciton in March 2007.
3. By driving people back into a phyiscal store, these same shoppers have been found on average to spend an additional $60 in the store while there to pick up their original order. Therefore this program has been found to drive additional sales (larger basket size) and more frequent store trips.
4. There is already a program in place to start bringing in-store stock availability to the web site. Currently in phase #1, Wal-Mart is bringing in 600 SKUs of inventory status, all within the electronics category (for major ticket items)
   

Quick Fact Pact - Some More Multi-Channel Research To Support Your Cross-Channel Marketing Efforts

Several recent studies suggest that:

1. In the 90 days before making a purchase, 87% of adults research
   the product online. (Source: BigResearch CIA, June 2006)
   
2. Multichannel shoppers might be more attractive to retailers than single-channel customers. A study by DoubleClick found that 65% of consumers were multichannel shoppers and their size was increasing at about 16%.
   
3. Forrester Research found that more than two-thirds of the consumers search products online, but make a purchase offline.
   
4. A study by JC Penney found that its customers who use all three channels (store, catalog and the Web) spent $887 per year compared to $150, $195 and $201 spent by customers who only use the Web, store, and catalog, respectively.
   
5. Another study by McKinsey & Company found that, on average, retail customers using multiple channels spent about 20-30% more than customers using a single channel.

Is There A Market For Grocery Services Online?

Two quick thoughts on this topic of bringing more local grocery information to the web, which has been greatly discussed around here at ShopLocal. According to Forrester Research...

1. A lack of access to online grocery services is a major reason that 90% of web shoppers don't purchase groceries online.

2. Over the next five (5) years, grocery is predicted to be the fastest growing category in which the web directly influences in-store (and for that matter multi-channel) sales.

How MobileTools Will Be Driving Multi Channel Shopping In The Future

Here is a forward looking piece from Forrester Research that talks about how consumers in the coming years will be turning to their mobile devices to assist them in shopping across channels. The one interesting omission from this article is that the author does not address GPS enable phones and all of the innovative applications that are possible using this location based technology.

Mobile shopping looks to change retail self-service
By Tamara Mendelsohn, Forrester Research 11 Jun 2007

Retailers struggle to adapt as the online channel shifts the balance of control into consumers’ hands and increases pressure on stores to deliver superior experiences. Consumers who research products online before buying them offline will influence more than $500 billion of offline sales in 2007.

Now, retail’s newest sales channel, mobile, promises to change the dynamics of shopping yet again.

Over time, mobile will bring three new attributes to the multichannel shopping experience — portability, location awareness and ubiquity — characteristics that bring consumer control to a whole new level.

More than three-quarters of households in the United States (88.4 million), own at least one mobile phone; the average is two per household. As carriers continue to offer low-cost services such as prepaid and family plans and as new entrants target underserved segments, Forrester predicts household penetration in the U.S. will exceed 85 percent by the end of the decade, outstripping the Web.

As U.S. consumers grow comfortable with using mobile devices for activities beyond voice, the mobile channel stands to exert a greater impact on their shopping habits. Although buying products through the mobile phone still is far from becoming mainstream, using the device as a self-service tool to aid in the shopping experience is much more imminent.

As the form of mobile commerce with the lowest consumer risk and greatest value proposition, product search will be the starting point to mobile shopping for most consumers. Mobile applications for search and comparison are emerging to aid shoppers and give them more control at the point of decision. SCANBUY, for example, enables shoppers to compare retail prices with online prices by taking a picture of the barcode or tapping the barcode number into a downloadable mobile application. The application then retrieves prices for the product from online comparison shopping engines.

GPShopper, which has more than 100,000 users through its mobile application, lets consumers search for products at local stores and compare prices and promotions. NearbyNow, another local search-based application, gathers local inventory feeds from mall-based stores; when users search for specific products, the application sends back an SMS detailing which stores carry the product and whether it is in stock.

Mobile-based product search threatens to turn brick-and-mortar stores into showrooms for Web-tailers such as Amazon.com and other lower-priced online pure plays as consumers compare prices while in-store. So not only do retailers have to compete with low-priced online pure plays in the Web channel, now they have to do so within their stores.

Retailers can’t fight consumers who want to compare retail store prices to Web prices; instead, they should give consumers an incentive to identify themselves through their mobile devices when in the store, which will provide an opportunity to target in-store shoppers. This requires store-based technologies such as Bluetooth-enabled kiosks and, eventually, mobile-location-aware services that can engage consumers when they are in the store and help to prevent them from defecting to a competitor.

Local search also takes center stage as on-the-go consumers search for products and where to buy them. This places pressure on retailers to release local store inventory data (when available) to engines such as NearbyNow, Channel Intelligence and ShopLocal, and to begin buying keywords on local search engines and general search engines.

There is no rest for the weary retailer as consumers increasingly connect themselves to new channels and to each other, arming themselves with information to make smarter decisions and take control over a process that traditionally has given retailers the upper hand. Retailers that want to succeed in this new world are given little choice but to engage with consumers on their terms and use technologies of their own to grant them entrance into consumers’ connected lives.

Platinum Guild International Uses the Internet to Bring Customers Into Their Store

Here is yet another "case study" of another "store" that has realized the importance of having a web site presence that focuses on research and information, as a way of preparing and driving people into local stores at a later point. On an interesting side note, it was great so see that the presenter of this 'case study' (Jenny Luker, PGI senior vice president) actually used and referenced some of the ShopLocal W2S research that we published in the past.

To read the whole news story, go to: http://www.jckonline.com/article/CA6448208.html

How Rich Media Display Ads Driving Serious Results - Espically Off Line

Just two small tidbits about the increasing impactful role that rich media ads are playing...

1. Phil Cara, director of Yahoo Consumer Direct, was recently quoted for saying:

"We (Yahoo!) get insights and then advise on best practices. For example, when rich media became popular, we did a side-by-side comparison of all the results and saw that there was a better than 50% higher result from those campaigns that included rich media. So we were able to improve our product by including rich media at no additional cost in more campaigns."

2. New research from eMarketer that suggests that rich media display ads will grow from about $1 billion per year to over $7 billion by the year 2011


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New Way Of Closing The Multi Channel Shopping Loop

Looks like AC Nielsen and Yahoo! have really done the impossible. They can now measure the impact of online research on offline sales. Simply amazing. The process and methodology seems really solid as do the results. This brings new meaning and definition to the words "ad targeting" and offline accountability and measurement.

Bringing BT Home Once Again
by Steve Smith, Friday, May 25, 2007

AS WE COVERED LAST WEEK with AC Nielsen's Steve Warshaw, Yahoo and the research company's four-year partnership on the Consumer Direct product combines online ad serving and user tracking with offline scanning of actual retail habits. The result is a remarkable view into the ways online advertising directly affects buying patterns. This week, Phil Cara, director of Yahoo Consumer Direct, explains how the product has evolved from an accountability measure to a targeting tool.

Behavioral Insider: How has Consumer Direct evolved over the last four years? What are some of the key learnings here?

Phil Cara: It was really a measurement tool when we created it. CPG sales happen in stores. So when we started, the whole concept was, how can we provide better understanding to our customers of how online marketing can impact offline sales.

Four years later, the whole model has flipped. Accountability is just a feature in the product, but the product is really the targeting -- and that is what our customers have embraced. They see the targeting as a way to gain efficiency in their marketing plans. The real promise of digital marketing is not just to do it the way we do it offline, but to do it better. And the product is much better today than just two years ago. We now have over 90 results. In the first 40 results we saw an average offline sales difference [as a result of exposure to online campaigns] of 19%. Today that number is 29%.

Behavioral Insider: What explains the increase in results?

Cara: Some of it is improvements in predictive models. The other, I think, is just the experience of the advertising community. The creative is much better than it was a couple of years ago. And then things like broadband adoption and even the technology continues to improve our ad serving. Our frequency capping is better. Our BT is better.

Behavioral Insider: Walk me through how the process works on Yahoo's end.

Cara: There are three parts to this product; first is targeting and segmentation. Nielsen creates a predictive model, they give it to us and we run it on our BT engine, which enables us to identify the consumers that fit the model. We create predictive models.

And then we score our database of 130 million Yahoo users and we create an audience. So typically we will score 10% of the network. We now create an audience of about 13 million Yahoo users in probably eight to ten million households. We serve an ad campaign typically of about 60 million to 100 million impressions to that audience. As the campaign is running we will naturally hit some of those 46,000 Homescan panelists, and we are able to track which of those panelists have been exposed to the advertising and which have not.

At the end of the campaign, we send that exposure file back to Nielsen, which now knows that, say, 4,000 of this 46,000 were exposed to this campaign. Nielsen will create a control of 4,000 that were not exposed that have basically the exact same purchasing and demographic profile of those that were exposed. And then from that Nielsen does a very detailed sales impact analysis.

The key things we are looking at are, what was the sales difference? How did it come about? What is the projection of actual offline sales attributed to this campaign? How much in dollars did I drive to the store? Then the customer has the ability to do some ROI calculations.

Behavioral Insider: Can Yahoo also take these findings and use them to improve targeting and creative?

Cara: We get insights and then advise on best practices. For example, when rich media became popular, we did a side-by-side comparison of all the results and saw that there was a better than 50% higher result from those campaigns that included rich media. So we were able to improve our product by including rich media at no additional cost in more campaigns.

Behavioral Insider: How does the Homescan data help deepen your profile of Yahoo users?

Cara: It is the core of helping us create good predictive models. There is a difference between someone who is a heavy category purchaser and a light purchaser, and that has a lot of value in the model. If you think about the way most advertising is conducted, you might go after, say, women 25 to 54. The reality is that not all women 25 to 54 are even buying a category. And then there are those who are buying a category heavily, so 20% may be driving 80% of the volume. So we are using this insight [from Homescan] to find that 20%. And that is what adds lift to the campaign and proves efficiency.

Behavioral Insider: Is that what you mean when you say that the model has flipped from accountability to targeting?

Cara: Yes. Most of the CPG companies and other industries understand that if they can find people in the category, that it is going to add efficiency to their marketing. The problem is most media can't do that.

Behavioral Insider: Finally, walk us me through a case where all of this comes together, where you use Homescan data to hone targeting on your network and then prove its effect back at retail.

Cara: We had a food manufacturer that had a specific initiative to increase buying rates in Wal-Mart Super Centers. So we got into Homescan and identified consumers who buy that category, in this case cereal, and who also shop at Wal-Mart Super Centers. And from that we created a predictive model. We scored our network, created an audience. Ran the campaign, which included a promotional offering, and at the end of the campaign measured the purchasing across all outlets and also Wal-Mart. While the campaign did well across all outlets, it did substantially better, over 50% sales lift, in Wal-Mart Super Centers.

Retailer Shopping Channels Continue To Converge

In a recent Forrester study (The Inevitable Convergence Of Retail Channels -- How POS, Commerce Platforms, And Contact Center Applications Unite - 5/17/07) that talks about how more and more consumers are now demanding consistent information from retailers as they cross channel shop. The type of information that these consumers are looking for integrated access are loyalty programs and promotions to inventory visibility and availability. Retailers are going to have to build bridges across these channels so as to offer these multi channel shoppers universal, up to date access to all required data points.

Here are a few stand out findings from the study, but make sure to take a look at the chart at the bottom. It gives a little more insight into whom exactly is multi channel shopping these days (as far as life stage clusters):

• Need for more consistent experience
• Single unified loyalty program
• Consistent promotions across channels
• Inventory and fulfillment tracking
• Returns regardless of purchase channel

• Consumer Facing Features
  • Loyalty programs – might allow for identification of users
  • Mobile technology – allows for immediate pricing information
  • Inventory management – online and in-store inventory will available in one place

• Over half of online consumers research online but purchase in store
  • Expectation of one single experience across channels

How Simular Do Online Shoppers & Off Line Shoppers Behave?

Very recently (5/21/07), some new research came out from Performics DoubleClick (via the e-tailing group) that talks about the loyalty of online shoppers. Below are the two most interesting sound bites, but here is my question? Would the same results apply to those that shop off line? I would guess not, as price comparison shopping is much more costly and difficult to do in the physical world than it is in the virtual world. This has to be good news for retailers, unless some of the mobile comparison shopping services take off.

• Seventy-one percent of shoppers “browse multiple online stores prior to completing a purchase."
• Four out of ten (42 percent) shoppers “price shop a product via comparison engines."
  

For more on the results on this survey that Performics DoubleClick ran, click here

A New Way To Think About Tracking Multi Channel Shopping

So I just read the below article on some a new framework on how to track those shoppers that cross shopping channels. Interesting read which I encourage you all to read. My big take away is the best wat to track this behavior is through offering tools that encourage and make this type of shopping easier and more possible. As a result, if you build and release a useful tool full of utility, people will use it and you will be able to capture loads of data points as a subsequent result.

How to Embrace Multichannel Behavior
By Jack Aaronson - May 18, 2007

We've looked previously at ways to understand multichannel user behavior and about Web-to-store and store-to-Web analysis. Today, we'll step back and look more generally at the methodology needed to really understand multichannel behavior. I call it "embrace it, then trace it."

To understand the philosophy, I'll use a folklore tale of an architect. (I believe the story is true; if you know the source, please tell me.) According to the story, an architect was hired to design a college campus. He put up the buildings but created no sidewalks. When the head of the school asked him where the sidewalks were, he replied, "The students will create the sidewalks." Sure enough, a year later the architect visited the school and built paved sidewalks where the students had created well-worn paths in the grass.

I love the images and inspiration this story conjures. It's truly customer-centric (needs-based) design. We can learn from this story as we create a methodology for modeling multichannel behavior. You're most likely aware of how your users act within a channel. You know how to create the best brick-and-mortar experience, catalog, Web site, kiosk, call center, sales office, Web 2.0 widget, and the like. In the story of the architect, these channels are the buildings. They run fairly well on their own. But how do users move between them? What paths do they create? And, most important, how can we analyze the paths' success and value?

Here are the three steps to the "embrace it, then trace it" methodology:

Embrace It

Embracing multichannel behavior is like paving the sidewalks between the buildings. First, you must spend time watching user behavior. Then you can understand what pathways the users are creating. Some pathways we've seen created in the last few years include:

* People researching online, then buying in the stores
* People going to a store to feel and touch, then finding the cheapest price online
* People browsing a catalog, then calling the call center or ordering online
* People browsing online, then calling to buy
* People banking online and at the ATM
* Businesses interacting with a supplier's sales rep in person and via client extranets

While we have seen these behaviors before, your users might be creating paths unique to your industry or unique to their needs.

The problem is most companies don't know how to track this behavior. That's because there are no pathways that make this behavior traceable. Once you understand what these paths are (or at least some of them), it's time to pave the sidewalks. Create functionality that not only enables the behavior but also makes it easy for the user to take these paths.

I've given store/Web examples in previously. In a nutshell, here are some ways people create pathways between channels:

* Create "catalog quick order" features on your site to enable catalog users to easily buy online while holding their catalogs.
* Create printable shopping carts and integrate "pick up in store" functionality that allows people to buy online and pick up in store.
* Let sales people create accounts for in-store customers that contain wish lists of the products they viewed in the store, allowing them to purchase them online.
* Print vanity URLs in your catalogs that enable quick links online that show the merchandise in that section of the catalog.
* Let salespeople have their own extranets for each of their business clients.

All of these ideas create paths and encourage the behavior by making it simpler.

Trace It

You can't track behavior and understand its value until you enable it. Once the sidewalks are paved, it's time to track who's using which ones. Analytic packages like Coremetrics and Omniture are making great strides in multichannel analytics. With integrated point of sale systems, online and Web 2.0 metrics, and the like, work with vendors to install tracking systems on each pathway. Once the analytics are in place, you can understand the value of not only each path but channel permutations. In other words, what type of multichannel user is more profitable? Those who use channels X and Y, or those who use channels Y and Z? What about those who use X, Y, and Z together?

Credit It

The last piece of the puzzle has to do with credit. Who gets credit for a sale that starts on the Web and finishes in the store? Does the catalog get credit for a purchase that began there? Business rules must be put in place to assign value to the paths. Not only does the value have a path, it's split between the path's endpoints. Perhaps a path from the catalog to the store is credited X percent to the catalog and Y percent to the store for the first purchase. Subsequent online purchases by the same customer might be attributed differently. The catalog was responsible for the beginning of the relationship and should be credited to some degree for subsequent purchases, up to a certain amount.

Each business is different, so this is the most vague and mystical part of the process. An accounting structure must be put in place that all channels agree upon. That will encourage multichannel users, which is what we want. By splitting the credit for each path and letting each channel retain some percentage after the first sale, the fear of channibalism is lessoned.

Conclusion

People fear what they can't control or understand. A lot of the concern around the multichannel user experience is simply that companies haven't figured out how to capture the data. Once the data is captured, it's a matter of creating business rules to understand credit and value.

The first step is understanding the paths people are taking between your buildings and why. Once you create the sidewalks that let them do this easily, everything else will follow suit. The technology exists to track these sidewalks, attribute value to them, and credit the channels appropriately.

The Buying Decision Making Process Is Not A Funnel Any More

Here is a little challenge to my (and probably your) thinking. We’ve always imagined the purchase process as a funnel – but it’s not. New technology allows consumers to gather information at all stages of the purchase process. Half of all consumers are still gathering information from a variety of sources right up to their point of purchase. Wow, that really does shake up my mental thought process of how I think about leading a user towards conversion.

Purchase Intent Of A User Goes Up If They Searched Before Shopping

Here is some interesting research from Yahoo! Search Marketing that talks about how searchers make up their minds online & are less likely to change them when actually going offline to make a purchase. It indicates that these users that are searching online and ahead of time and are building their expertise prior to purchase, that this group is less likely to change their mind about the product they wanted while shopping offline.



Source:

Retail Fluency Report, Summer 2005

CMO Council, in partnership with ConsumerEdge Research Group

Target: Offline Purchasers of Consumer Electronics (Digital Camera, Computer/Laptop, DVR/DVD player, Printer, TV purchasers)

Significant difference at a 95% confidence level

Online Search Influences Over 50% Of Online Sales. Does This Hold Up For Off Line Sales?

So here is the big question...What percent of online searches influence off line sales? All of the below research talks about online search's direct influence over eCommerce sales. I wonder if this research holds true for influencing off line sales? I would imagine that the influence of search is actually greater. Yes? No? Leave a comment and tell me what you think?

Search Before the Purchase Understanding Buyer Search Activity as it Builds to Online Purchase
Feb 2005

To better understand how consumers use search engines in the online purchase process, DoubleClick commissioned comScore Networks to use its panel of 1.5 million U.S. Internet consumers to provide further insights. comScore identified people who made purchases on one of 30 sites in four categories: Apparel, Computer Hardware, Sports/Fitness and Travel. comScore then captured all relevant search activity of those buyers within the four specific categories during the 12 weeks prior to purchase, separating their search terms related to their ultimate purchase topic from other types of searches they may have conducted.

Most Buyers Complete Their Relevant Search Activity Well in Advance of Purchase

Most searchers observed in the comScore panel completed their search activity well in advance of purchase, as shown in the below graph. This is a striking observation, as many marketers consider that a click from a search engine that does not convert into a sale in the same session is worthless, while the research indicates that buyers do considerable advance planning and research before completing their transactions.



Looking at searchers, the story is even clearer: the majority of buyers never searched for a retailer brand at all in the 12 weeks preceding their purchase. In the Computer Hardware vertical, 92% of all searchers used some kind of generic search but only 27% performed a brand-only search, as shown in Figure 3 (note that the numbers add up to more than 100% because some searchers may have employed more than one search style).



Summary Level Findings From This Study

• Search plays a role in roughly half of all online purchases.
• The majority of pre-purchase search activity (searches and clicks) involves generic terms, not the merchants’ brands.
• Branded terms peak in search activity closer to the purchase.
• Most buyers complete their relevant search activity well in advance of the purchase.
• Generic terms represent an opportunity to attract and engage in-market searchers throughout the buying cycle.
• Search result analyses (sales and ROI) that consider only a short period prior to purchase do not account for the value of generic search activity earlier in the buying cycle.

Online Research Once Again Proven To Be An Integral Part Of The In Store Shopping Experience

Here is a news clip that I pulled from Accenture Research that is yet another data point confirming what we all know to be true about the web's influence on in store sales. Thanks Ted (Westerheide) for catching this and pointing this study out to me.

"In an recent Accenture survey (4/4/07) of more than 600 U.S. consumers has found that the majority of consumers use the Internet as part of the shopping process even if they go to stores to purchase or pick up items. The data suggest that retailers and consumer goods companies need to focus on customer service and information available both from call centers and online or risk losing customers researching potential purchases.

While two-thirds (67 percent) of survey respondents said they prefer to make purchases in physical stores respondents also said they research product features online (69 percent), compare prices online before shopping in a physical store (68 percent) or use the Internet to locate items online before going to a store to purchase (58 percent). Only 13 percent of respondents said the Internet has not improved their in-store shopping experience.

“Instead of replacing bricks and mortar stores, the Internet is an extension of consumers’ in-store shopping experience providing a resource to research product and price,” said Jeff Smith, global managing director of Accenture’s Retail practice. “Retailers and manufacturers must understand this consumer behavior trend in order to reach shoppers, educate them, serve them and earn their loyalty.”

Awareness and loyalty

When asked to identify the most powerful influencers of their purchase decisions, the greatest number of respondents – 60 percent – said word-of-mouth, followed by advertising (47 percent) and online information (43 percent) are the most influential. The top three ways consumers said they learn about new products are television (64 percent), word of mouth (47 percent) and print ads (37 percent).

Half (50 percent) of consumers surveyed said they value special promotions to retain their business while 37 percent said they look for improved customer service. Promotions for frequent customers appear to be more effective for women than for men with 54 percent of female respondents saying they value these promotions compared to 47 percent of males surveyed.

Timing seems to be a bigger influence than promotions for new product purchases of both health and beauty items. For example, 33 percent of respondents said they bought a new health or beauty product because they needed it at the time compared with only 22 percent who said they bought such a product because they had a coupon or found the product on sale.

“It’s critical to understand customers’ wants and needs before, during and after the actual purchase,” said Keith Barringer, global managing director of Accenture’s Consumer Goods & Services practice. “Increasing insight into the customer – and acting on it – can help manufacturers successfully time new product launches and help retailers know when to offer promotions to increase revenue and customer loyalty.”

The majority (55 percent) of respondents said new products are introduced before they realize a need for them while nearly half (47 percent) said that new products are introduced that they don’t feel they need. Almost one-third (30 percent) of respondents said they could think of new products they need that have not been developed yet.

“This research shows there are significant opportunities for manufacturers to improve their innovation and product development processes,” added Barringer.

Service and selection

The survey findings indicate that consumers want better service and product selection both online and in the store. More than two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents reported that, when shopping in physical stores, they often find too few registers are open and more than half (54 percent) say there are not enough sales people available. Many respondents said they will go elsewhere if they don’t find the appropriate selection at a certain store; this is particularly true for items such as footwear (81 percent); music, movies and books (78 percent); and jeans (76 percent).

“Consumers are telling us that there is a need for more efficient customer service departments,” said Smith. “The phone, and increasingly a company’s web site, are the first points of entry. If the on-hold time is too long, if the customer is passed around to different departments or if online navigation is confusing the sale can easily be lost. Customer service can be a powerful – and profitable – differentiator for retailers that know what their customers want and how to deliver it.”

Only 50 percent of respondents report getting help always or most of the time for electronics stores and household furnishings with 47 percent saying the same for specialty stores. According to 43 percent of respondents, mass retailers provide help some of the time but 29 percent report the mass stores rarely or never have help available when needed.

The survey also found:

• Location is not shoppers’ main concern. Consumers say price and product selection matter more than store location when shopping. The key criteria respondents cited for deciding where to shop are price (85 percent), and product selection (69 percent) followed by store proximity (57 percent).
• Gender differences. More men than women (51 percent vs. 39 percent) report the Internet has improved the in-store shopping experience by allowing them to order items online for in-store pick-up. More men than women (17 percent vs. 9 percent) purchase in-store to get better prices while more women than men (16 percent vs. 8 percent) purchase in-store to avoid shipping charges."
  

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http://newsroom.accenture.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4529