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It's important for retailers to know who their potential customers are online in order to market to them effectively.In the first quarter of 2014, 198 million U.S. consumers bought something online, according to comScore's quarterly State Of Retail report. That translates to 78% of the U.S. population age 15 and above.
But who are these shoppers driving the trend of buying online and on mobile devices?
In a new report, BI Intelligence breaks down the demographics of U.S. online and mobile shoppers by gender, age, income, and education, and takes a look at what they're shopping for, and how their behaviors differ...
Mobile, social, and the cacophony of modern interruption marketing has transformed the retail path to purchase, and forced retail marketers to focus on building lasting relationships that benefit customers.
...“Now, because of smartphones and tablets, marketers need to fundamentally rethink things. Shopping is becoming an iterative rather than a serial process. Consumers no longer go shopping, they always are shopping.”
Among the less frequently discussed casualties of modern marketing is the path to purchase.The path to purchase is not a sidewalk leading from the shopper’s front door to a store; it is a cycle repeated over and over, and it requires marketers to take a different tack....
From mobile to social, the rapid adoption of digital technologies, devices and services by consumers is reshaping our entire economy.
We’ve observed three factors in this trend: - First, industry leaders don’t seem to grasp how fundamentally transformative digital technologies are and don’t see a need for digital innovation. - Second, they completely underestimate how digitally sophisticated modern consumers are—and how their expectations are increasing. - Third, they seem unable or unwilling to transform their organizations to adapt to this new digital world. One such industry undergoing significant transformation due to digital is retail. Whether it’s to check reviews, compare prices or determine availability, most consumers go online before they shop. These online interactions determine what, how and where consumers shop.
Shoppers want selection, purchasing options (online or in-store), price competitiveness and excellent online service—throughout the buying process and even post-purchase. And they want it across all digital channels and on all their devices. In the coming years, we’re betting that no large retailer can thrive, let alone survive, without seriously upping their digital game and meeting the increasingly high expectations of their sophisticated customers...
PNo industry has been more transfigured in the past year than retail. Stores now behave like websites, tracking customers as they browse. American malls have pretty much died (but maybe on their way back to life). And in some parts of the country you can have your milk and eggs home-delivered along with your new iPod on the same day. Those who lead the field strike the right balance between physical and digital, experience and affordability, convenience and quality....
In the ever-changing world of Internet commerce, a new and powerful trend is taking over: discovery shopping.
It is the latest evolution in the e-commerce space – a shift from vending machine model of the industry’s earliest days to a content rich, socially driven shopping experience, where entertainment and interaction, not just price, dominates.
What defines discovery shopping?It is social. Consider Pinterest to which more than 45 million* people now flock each month to curate their boards, “pinning” images of products they like.
At the same time, Pinterest customers can browse the collections of others, in search of inspiration. Companies like Pinterest not only help shoppers unearth and share unique products in an increasingly cluttered web universe, but make the experience entertaining and social, too...
Perhaps Kmart panicked after having a nightmare that it was November and had forgotten to put together a holiday ad campaign, or maybe some prankster at Sears changed a Kmart marketing exec’s desk calendar. Why else would the beleaguered retailer start airing a holiday shopping ad while it’s still summer?AdAge reports that Kmart started airing the below ad yesterday in various markets around this country, much of which is still reeling from all the back-to-school sales.Granted, it’s an ad for Kmart’s holiday layaway program so it makes sense that it would be on TV before the huge holiday commercial push, but can’t we at least wait until the autumnal equinox has come and gone before clogging our TVs with hallucinatory images of talking gingerbread men?...
A recent study called "Tweets in Action: Retail" by Compete, a media data analyzing company, discovered that Twitter users who see a retailer's tweet are more likely to visit their retail websites and make online purchases. This article made me consider the impact of a tweet on online retailers. I feel very strongly about online retailers using various social media outlets to build awareness around their business and boost sales. Without using this readily available tool, retailers online and off are missing out on a key audience that are constantly consuming information. This is the first in a series where I will examine social media tools and how they can work for online retailers....
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...Millions are spent on content creation and propagation across many channels and media. Multi-channel marketing concepts can be fitted to this alternate use case by helping brand marketers understand the contribution of content investments to an engaged audience of individual consumers. It’s like placing iBeacons on branded content such that marketing spend can be optimized around the messaging that connects best with consumers. Metrics such as open rates and website visitor dwell times become indicators of content quality comparable on a relative basis.It takes a blend of informed creative brilliance and technology enablement to pull this off – key is informed.
To these ends, it’s essential to reign in the insights digital channels capture to fuel a profile of individual consumers that lives, grows, and evolves just like the person it describes. These insights help both agencies and brand marketers inform brand storytelling with knowledge of their consumers beyond superficial characteristics. In this way, you could say consumers help write the story....
If the U.S. economy is getting better, then why are major retail chains closing thousands of stores? If we truly are in an “economic recovery”, then why do sales figures continue to go down for large retailers all over the country? Without a doubt, the rise of Internet retailing giants such as Amazon.com have had a huge impact. Today, there are millions of Americans that actually prefer to shop online. Personally, when I published my novel I made it solely available on Amazon. But Internet shopping alone does not account for the great retail apocalypse that we are witnessing.
In fact, some retail experts estimate that the Internet has accounted for only about 20 percent of the decline that we are seeing. Most of the rest of it can be accounted for by the slow, steady death of the middle class U.S. consumer. Median household income has declined for five years in a row, but all of our bills just keep going up. That means that the amount of disposable income that average Americans have continues to shrink, and that is really bad news for retailers....
A blog about ecommerce marketing, running an online business and updates to Shopify's ecommerce community. Small and boutique retailers have their work cut out for them when it comes to staying in business. There's a lot they need to know, and a lot that they need to take action on. Whether it's the latest trends in omni-channel retail, engaging their most loyal customers over social media, or understanding the way technology and mobile are revolutionizing how they accept payments.
Which is why I've taken the liberty of assembling the top 25 blogs that every small retailer needs to read and subscribe to if they want to stay ahead of the curve and thrive when it comes to selling in person...
What do customers want in a multichannel experience and how will technology help deliver it in 2014?
Customers don’t always know what it is they want, but by looking at current habits, themes will undoubtedly emerge.
Walker Sands has recently surveyed 1,000 US consumers on the future of retail. The results are interesting and give some pointers to retailers hoping to stay on consumer trend for buying habits.
Here are the best bits...
In an empowered age, people are exhibiting dramatically new habits in the way they become aware, consider, buy and advocate. These new habits supplement and do not necessarily in the near term replace the ways they traditionally evaluated and bought products and services. However, in time, we anticipate that these new behaviors are likely to become dominant.The three biggest shifts are enhanced expectations, connected experiences and self marketing.A simple example of a company that has both fueled and benefited from these shifts is Amazon. They both have created and responded to peoples expectations for speed, value and service, seamlessly connected all aspects of the “marketing funnel” and fed a habit of us marketing to ourselves as we search, evaluate and comment on products and services. Today 30% of all e-commerce searches start on Amazon versus only 13% on Google....
This sort of “blogging is dead, especially for business” thinking as shared in Beyond Blogging: 13 Content Marketing Opportunities for Ecommerce by Linda Bustos drives me nuts: Remember when business...
Via Deanna Dahlsad
So who are these social media front runners? Most of them are the big named brands that you know and love.Victoria’s Secret, Walmart and Adidas lead the Facebook front, while Nordstrom, Williams-Sonoma and Barneys New York lead on Pinterest. Want to slip to the top? Know your demographic, produce engaging content and find the social media platform that’s right for you...
Via janlgordon
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The surprise is how significant men are in the online marketing and retail mix. Recommended reading for retail and marketing.9/10