Look, buy and tell online

As the impact of online shopping is now being measured and picked over, as opposed to anecdotally discussed, it’s good to look at some research out of the UK and US from IT giant Cisco.

The US and UK have – and will – always be great leading indicators for how our Australian market operates. I remember somebody telling me once that Canadians and Australians had a deep interest for all things British and American, but a healthy disregard for the UK and US.

Cisco spoke to 1,000 UK and US shoppers to better understand their views of online retailing versus physical store retailing. While the thrust may have been around the use of connectivity and hardware, being Cisco’s raison d’etre, it illuminates just as clearly our open minded acceptance of online shopping of just being another way to shop.

Online shopping isn’t viewed or used, with the exception of hard-core geeks, any differently from any other journey from wanting a product or service to buying it. The report uses the phrase that shoppers “in the US and UK want new ways to shop which more fully integrate the online and offline” shopping experience.

The statistics from the report present pretty much as we suspect from all the anecdotes and online comments, saying that 63% of shoppers use online channels to find the lowest prices, and 46% use online to save time. All good. The report also highlighted just how much we research online with 29% of shoppers using online reviews before shopping. Higher than asking in-store staff at 24%, print media, securing just 19%, and TV at 10%.

And our pre-shopping habits are highlighted – and we are termed – ‘calculating shoppers’ in the Cisco report, being those of us who always used the internet to research before buying products, using tools like lassoo.com in Australia.

Over half of all shoppers now pre-shop online, a point not missed on retailers. In a separate report this month, 55% of European retailers believe that shoppers have higher product knowledge than their own store staff, as a direct result of online pre-shopping.

While we may have gone deeply online, word-of-mouth recommendations on products and services is still high, with 60% of shoppers saying that friends and family are the most important information source before purchasing. And guess where most family members go to find information on products or service before buying? Yep, online. So the virtuous circle of “looking, buying and telling everybody about what I bought” that used to be done on paper via TV and over dinner tables, at water coolers and in the pub, is now all transacted online.

Lindsay Parker, Cisco’s global retail industry director captured it all in a non-tech way, saying shoppers “want to shop anywhere, anytime, on any device. And they prefer to shop with retailers that provide seamless, customised experiences.”

And when retailers do provide them with “seamless, customised experiences”, shoppers shop with them.

In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.