Cyber Monday

Changing Buying Behaviors: Clues from Thanksgiving Weekend 2017

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Research , , , , , , ,

If there was any doubt that we’re in the midst of fundamental changes in consumer buying behaviors, the results from the opening days of the 2017 holiday season have put such questions to rest.

Movable Ink, a firm that enables content personalization within e-mails, has just published some insightful statistics it compiled from Thanksgiving weekend last month.  Movable Ink logged nearly 438 million e-mail opens between the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and the following Cyber Monday. What did it find?

To start with, it found that recipients engaged with them.

Of the e-mails sent on Black Friday, nearly 50% achieved read lengths of at least 15 seconds. On Cyber Monday, the results were nearly the same (~46%).

Fifteen seconds may not seem like a long time to engage with an e-mail, but it’s light years compared to what is often experienced in consumer e-retail.

Movable Ink also found that the majority of the e-mails were opened on smartphones — far outstripping desktops and tablets:

  • Smartphones: ~53% of e-mail opens
  • Desktop computers: ~25%
  • Tablet opens: ~16%

An equal 53% of conversion actions happened on smartphones … but desktop conversions proved to be higher than their open stats, and e-mails opened on tablets were much less likely to experience conversions:

  • Smartphone: ~53% of e-mail conversions
  • Desktop computers: ~38%
  • Tablets: ~8%

Consumers were certainly in a buying mood over the holiday weekend, with purchases averaging between $120 and $140 on each of the four days of the long weekend:

  • Black Friday: An average of $124 spent
  • Saturday: $120
  • Sunday: $119
  • Cyber Monday: $141

However, while smartphones led in terms of e-mail engagement, when it comes to actual dollar sales smartphones come in last – by a country mile:

  • Desktop computers: ~$162 average holiday weekend total spend
  • Tablets: ~$107
  • Smartphones: ~$85

We can acknowledge that smartphones have become the most important method for reaching consumers with product content, coupons and special offers.  And yet, significantly more purchasing continues to happen on desktops.

One takeaway is that for all of the convenience smartphones purport to provide, the purchasing experience on mobile devices doesn’t yet match the experience on desktop computers.

It would also help if there was more similarity between the purchasing process sellers are delivering across all platforms. That continues to be a missing ingredient with some sellers, and it’s likely explaining at least some of the dampening effect on mobile sales revenues.

Holiday shopping behaviors: Black Friday is losing some of its luster.

Phillip Nones Marketing, Marketing Communications, Sales , , , , , , , , , , , ,

It’s the beginning of October – which means that the holiday shopping season will soon be upon us.

… If it isn’t already, based on the holiday displays we’re already seeing cropping up at some major retail chain stores.

Of course, U.S. retailing firms have been gearing up for the season for months now, in terms of building merchandise inventories and so forth. But what sort of consumer shopping dynamics will they be facing this year?

According to new research published by Euclid, Inc. in its 2017 Evolution of Retail report which covers holiday physical and digital retail trends, Cyber Monday has now overtaken all of the other holiday-season shopping days in terms of consumer excitement.

That finding is based on a survey of ~1,500 U.S. consumers age 18 and older. While majorities of respondents report that they are excited about each of the three biggest revenue days of the holidays, for the first time ever Cyber Monday heads the list in terms of consumer interest and excitement:

  • Cyber Monday: ~72% of consumers report being excited about this shopping day
  • Black Friday: ~62%
  • Day after Christmas: ~55%

Clearly, online shopping continues to build momentum year over year. But the Euclid research also reveals that physical stores continue to have a major role in the “buying journey.”  Even among consumers in the 18-34 age group, three out of four respondents report that they visit physical stores on a regular basis to see products “in the flesh” – even if they purchase them online later.

Not surprisingly, “price” remain the biggest driver in consumer shopping behaviors during the holiday season, but convenience is another factor as well. It isn’t simply a store’s location that matters, but also how quickly shoppers can get in and out of the store that affects their views of “convenience.”

Interestingly, when comparing just in-store shopping plans, more respondents in the Euclid survey expect to be shopping on the day after Christmas (63%) than on Black Friday (60%) this year.

Perhaps the decisions by some big retailers to curtail store hours on that traditional first day of the holiday shopping season are being driven by more than simply altruism …

The complete Euclid report for 2017 can be downloaded here.

Holiday online shopping dynamics: The 2016 season’s results are already coming in.

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Marketing, Sales, Social Commentary , , , , , , , , ,

ohsOne of the neat aspects of online shopping is the ability to learn about consumer behaviors almost in real-time. No waiting around for published reports that are released months after the fact.

Moreover, we can know quite a bit more than simply gross sales figures, including traffic stats.

In fact, we already have extensive information available about consumer online shopping activities in the 2016 holiday season, thanks to data released by firms such as Connexity’s Hitwise division, which measures consumer behaviors across desktop, tablet and smartphone devices.

From Hitwise, we know that its Top 500 retail websites received more than 335 million visits on Thanksgiving Day alone. That averages out to just under 14 million visits per hour … but the time period of 8 pm to 11 pm had more than 50% greater traffic compared to the hourly average for the day.

Amazon.com was among the retailers receiving extensive traffic volume from 8 pm onward – in its case ~25% of its total traffic on Thanksgiving came in those final four hours of the day.

One supposes that after the “big meal,” the “big game” and the “big cleanup,” consumers decided cap off the day by plunking down at their computers or smartphones for some heavy-duty online shopping.

Hitwise found that Black Friday online shopping dynamics were different, with the top retail sites being busiest in the late morning hours, when site visits were around half again larger than Black Friday’s daily hourly average.

As for Cyber Monday, Hitwise found that consumer online shopping dynamics weren’t very much different from any other typical Monday – except that the overall volume (nearly 330 million visits) was substantially higher than the typical Monday volume of ~200 million visits. That, and a slightly greater-than-average share of online shopping happening in the early morning hours of 6, 7 and 8 am.

hwlAs for the persistent belief that Cyber Monday has more people shopping online during their time in the office, Hitwise is not seeing that phenomenon any longer.

Again, not very surprising in that more consumers have 24/7 access to digital devices in 2016 than they did ten or even just five years ago.

The Hitwise report for 2016 includes extensive findings not just on hourly shopping patterns, but also on product searches and key traffic drivers for the major online shopping websites. More data can be found on the Connexity/Hitwise website.

It’s Official: Cyber Monday 2014 was the Biggest e-Commerce Day in U.S. History

Phillip Nones Advertising, Business, Direct Marketing, Economics, Marketing Communications, Social Media , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cyber Monday ShoppingIn the days following Black Friday this year, we heard reports that consumer purchase volumes at stores were down more than 10% compared to 2013.

A number of explanations for the decline were given, among them the notion that Black Friday sales are less of a draw this year, since merchandise sales now begin before Thanksgiving and tend to run the entire month of December.

But some observers speculated as to whether soft Black Friday revenue figures presage an equally soft holiday shopping season overall.

Well … now that we have sales figures from Cyber Monday (the Monday following Black Friday weekend), I think it’s safe to say that any concerns about a tepid holiday buying season are unfounded.

Custora E-Commerce Pulse, a customer relationship management firm which tracked more than 100 million online shoppers and over $40 billion in e-commerce revenue over the full Thanksgiving Holiday weekend, has just reported that Cyber Monday e-commerce revenues were up over 15% compared with Cyber Monday 2013.

That makes Cyber Monday 2014 the single biggest day in U.S. online shopping ever in history.

Other days of the Thanksgiving weekend also showed robust gains in online shopping:  Black Friday online sales were up ~21% over 2013, and online shopping on Thanksgiving Day itself were up nearly 18% over Thanksgiving Day in 2013.

The strong growth was fueled by mobile shopping, e-mail marketing, plus online product searches on Google and other search engines.

In particular, mobile shopping accounted for ~22% of orders on Cyber Monday, significantly higher than the ~16% of orders recorded last year.

On Black Friday itself, mobile shopping accounted for around 30% of all orders — yet another dramatic increase over 2013 when mobile shopping account for just shy of 23% of orders.

This year’s Cyber Monday stats put the lie to the notion that e-mail marketing is losing its luster.  In fact, e-mail marketing drove nearly one in four online shopping orders, outstripping natural search (at ~19% of all orders) and paid search (~16% of orders).

Much ado about (practically) nothing: Social media and Cyber Monday.
Much ado about (practically) nothing: Social media and Cyber Monday.

And guess which channels weren’t a meaningful part of the holiday shopping experience this year?

If you guessed social media … you’re absolutely correct.

Taken together, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram accounted for only about 1.5% of online e-commerce orders on Cyber Monday.  (For the weekend as a whole, it was only slightly better at ~1.7%.)

This year’s statistics just add more confirmation of several truisms about online consumer marketing:

  • Targeted e-mail still works the best.
  • Online search is important.
  • Social media is like Lucy and the football.

The “Skinny” on 2010 Holiday Spending

Phillip Nones Uncategorized , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Consumer Holiday Spending
Holiday spending on the rise? Yes, but ...
The “early returns” from this year’s Black Friday retail sales are quite encouraging. Online retail sales are experiencing an even bigger bump in activity. The question is, do these positive early results foreshadow a strong holiday season overall?

Each year, Gallup attempts to answer that question in advance by conducting a poll every November in which it asks U.S. consumers for a prediction of the total amount of money they plan to spend on holiday gifts. This year’s poll findings were published this past week.

And the results? The good news from the consumer economy’s standpoint is that the average personal spending expectation has risen to $714 for 2010, which is ~12% higher than last year’s $638.

The not-so-good news is that we’re still in the doldrums when measured against most of the previous decade. In fact, only in the years of 2009, 2008 and 2002 has expected personal spending been lower than it is this year.

If we take an average of the ten years covering 2000-2009, the expected personal spending found by Gallup’s survey is $747, which means that 2010’s dollar amount doesn’t even come up to the average of the past decade.

Here’s another interesting finding from the survey: Evidently, the increase in expected holiday spending compared to last year is being driven by only a small percentage of consumers. Half of the Gallup respondents reported they would be spending “about the same” this year, whereas one third reported they would actually be spending less.

The remainder – fewer than 15% — reported they would be spending more.

And all of that activity on the Internet? We can be sure a goodly amount of it is driven by the desire to find the very best price available. And to prove that out, the latest online holiday shopping report survey from rich media firm Unicast finds that more than half of consumers are using the Web to research and compare deals between online stores and retail outlets.

The bottom line on all this: It’s a mixed picture with a slight lean on the scale in favor of optimism. Which is a darn sight more positive than what we saw in 2008 and 2009.

Happy Chris-kwanz-ukah, everyone.