Retail in Asia

In Trends

Taking Stock: The e-commerce Christmas

With the Christmas season creeping closer, holiday shopping has climbed in the agenda for retailers and many major brands. Research suggests that the Internet and e-commerce will have a greater influence than ever in shaping consumers’ purchasing habits.

A series of reports released in the run-up to the USA’s traditional Black Friday sales highlight the impact the internet and mobile devices are having on holiday shopping habits, as well as the potential threat to productivity online shopping can pose.

While the reports focus on the US market, the findings can apply to many markets where companies are preparing to execute their holiday sales strategies.

Internet essential for holiday shopping

The research shows that e-commerce has become a vital component for holiday shopping.

Research firm comScore estimates that in the first 18 days of the November-December holiday shopping season, US online sales grew 16 percent year-on-year to USD10.1 billion. On the heaviest shopping day of the first three weeks, USD829 million was spent in one day.

The company expects total sales for the holiday season to grow 17 percent to USD43.4 million – far ahead of the retail industry’s own estimates.

comScore subsequently estimated that US consumers spent USD1.04 billion online on Black Friday alone.

Many more online discounts were offered yesterday – which has been come to be known as Cyber Monday, the online equivalent of Black Friday.

But the ability to shop online is only one way the internet and technology is transforming customers’ holiday purchasing habits.

A separate report from Google claims that 88 percent of US holiday shoppers will research online before making a purchase.

The report, based on a survey of 1,500 holiday shoppers conducted for Google by Ipsos OTX, asserts that the line between online and offline shopping has become so blurred as to be almost indistinguishable.

Just over half of respondents said they would likely research online before visiting a store to purchase, and 17% indicated they would do the opposite.

Around 44 percent plan to also research and buy some products exclusively online and 32 percent will research online, visit a store to check out the product, then purchase it online. These figures would also mean there is significant overlap between consumers engaging in the various shopping habits.

Four in five shoppers will meanwhile use multiple devices simultaneously – such as smartphones and PCs, or smartphones and tablets – to help with holiday shopping. Consumers also plan to spend more time researching purchases due to the tight economic climate.

According to Google, all this means enterprises need to work hard to ensure their brand is at the top of consumers’ mind both in stores and online, and ensure their brand has full coverage across mobiles and tablets.

Shopping on the job

While brisk online shopping may be a boon to the consumer-facing parts of some organizations, the habit also threatens to inhibit productivity at work, according to the results of two different surveys.

Dell subsidiary Dell SonicWALL released the findings of a survey showing that 63 percent of businesses feared a greater decrease in productivity due to Cyber Monday online sales compared with last year.

The survey found 59 percent of businesses were more worried about loss of employee productivity from online shopping on Cyber Monday than about potential network threats.

Beyond the big day, 55 percent of businesses of all sizes predict that their employees will spend 2-4 hours per week shopping online during the holiday season.

Separately, Careerbuilder.com published its own survey showing that 50 percent of US workers plan to spend some time shopping online while at work during the season.

Around 34 percent plan to spend over an hour shopping at work – up from 27 percent at the time of a similar survey in 2010 – and 4 percent plan to spend five or more hours doing so.

Employers don’t seem to be thrilled, with 54 percent of those surveyed admitting they block employees from accessing certain websites, and 7 percent of human resource managers indicating they have fired an employee for holiday shopping in working hours.

Taking Stock is Retail in Asia’s fortnightly column dedicated to showcasing opinions from experts in the retail industry.