Digital Shopping Behavior Report: Is Social Media Overrated?

Sur­vey of 18,000 dig­i­tal shop­pers around the world indi­cates social media decline, but mobile, app, and in-store inte­grat­ed ini­tia­tives are on the rise.

Pat Hong By Pat Hong from Linkdex. Join the discussion » 0 comments

The devel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion of dig­i­tal shop­ping has already affect­ed the way con­sumers are shop­ping for goods and ser­vices, and there is no sign of this let­ting up in 2014. A Capgem­i­ni report into dig­i­tal shop­ping behav­iour has made a com­pre­hen­sive study of the way shop­pers are behav­ing in both mature, and devel­op­ing mar­kets, with fas­ci­nat­ing results.


The sim­plest, most effec­tive way and to find out the way con­sumers are inter­act­ing, expe­ri­enc­ing, and buy­ing from brands in the pur­chase fun­nel is to ask them. Out­sourc­ing tech­nol­o­gy con­sul­tan­cy Capgem­i­ni did exact­ly that, sur­vey­ing a mas­sive 18,000 con­sumers across 18 coun­tries in both mature and devel­op­ing mar­kets in their Dig­i­tal Shop­per Rel­e­van­cy Research Report 2014.

The report cov­ers a wide range of top­ics, with key find­ings reveal­ing: a decline in the influ­ence of social media as a dri­ver for pur­chase in devel­oped mar­kets; the grow­ing num­ber of dig­i­tal­ly savvy con­sumers in high-growth devel­op­ing mar­kets; and how dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives can best incen­tivize in-store pur­chas­es.

Here are five key find­ings from the report.

1. Social Media In Decline As A Driver For Consumer Purchases

Social media shows a com­par­a­tive decline since 2012. With retail stores expe­ri­ence a resur­gence as mobiles and app incen­tives are inte­grat­ed with offline and in-store expe­ri­ences, few­er shop­pers now expect the use of social media will change their shop­ping in the future.

2. Physical Stores Still Favored For Global Shoppers

Around the world, 72 per­cent of con­sumers still favor phys­i­cal stores for point-of-sale pur­chase, for all cat­e­gories except elec­tron­ics, con­sid­er­ing stores to be impor­tant or very impor­tant. This is slight­ly greater than the 67 per­cent of con­sumers who regard the Inter­net to be impor­tant or very impor­tant.

3. High-Growth Markets Extremely Digitally Savvy

Con­sumers in high-growth mar­kets showed a con­sid­er­ably high­er pref­er­ence for dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy and mar­ket­ing. Con­sumers were much more recep­tive to mar­ket­ing mes­sages in many aspects of mobile, social media, and in-store tech­nol­o­gy, than any of the 13 devel­oped mar­kets includ­ed in the study.

4. Fashion Takes The Digital Initiative

The fash­ion indus­try has tak­en the dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tive, expe­ri­enc­ing the high­est lev­el of online momen­tum with 9 per­cent growth. 61 per­cent of the 18,000 respon­dents indi­cat­ed that they had shopped online for fash­ion items in the last six months.

5. The Future Use of Digital Channels

Increas­ing­ly, as mobile and app usage grows, and in-store retail becomes more inte­grat­ed with dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing incen­tives, shop­pers will expect more flex­i­bil­i­ty in their shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

Dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies are going to play a major role in the future of con­sumer shop­ping. Con­sumers will expect rewards for their loy­al­ty and rec­om­men­da­tions, just as they expect and wait for incen­tives before pulling the trig­ger on pur­chas­ing deci­sions. A chal­lenge for retail­ers will be to inte­grate online and offline mar­ket­ing fun­nels, and stream­line in-store retail with wider dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing efforts.

7 Digital Shopping Personas — Rise Of The ‘True Digital Shopper’

An impor­tant aspect of the report is in how it dis­tin­guish­es shop­pers in dif­fer­ent ter­ri­to­ries. The study iden­ti­fied sev­en shop­ping per­sonas in total, seg­ment­ed by mature and devel­op­ing mar­kets:

digital-shopping-personas

In mature mar­kets, the largest major­i­ty of con­sumers (41 per­cent) are “social­ly-engaged dig­i­tal shop­pers,” or those who engage with brands on social media and are hap­py to pro­vide per­son­al data to retail­ers. How­ev­er there is a sug­ges­tion in the study that shop­pers in this group progress to being “true dig­i­tal shop­pers” (which now num­bers as high as 19 per­cent in mature mar­kets), those who read­i­ly use mobiles, and apps to get the best deals on dig­i­tal or in-store shop­ping pur­chas­es, and are able to com­pare prod­ucts, track deliv­ery, and form long-term rela­tion­ships with the brands they like.

high-growth-digital-shopping

High-growth mar­kets such as Brazil, Chi­na, India, Mex­i­co, and Rus­sia, have an even greater lev­els of dig­i­tal engage­ment, with a mas­sive 77 per­cent of shop­pers falling into either “inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal shop­per,” “or technophile dig­i­tal shop­per” per­sonas, both of whom have embraced dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, mes­sag­ing, and incen­tives as part of their over­all shop­ping expe­ri­ences.

6 Takeaways for Brands from Capgemini’s Report

Capge­meni’s report high­lights some key take­aways for con­sumer fac­ing brands, in order to inform and devel­op strate­gies that can adapt to the evo­lu­tion of dig­i­tal shop­ping behav­ior:

  1. Change from a prod­uct- or fea­ture-focused approach, to a con­sumer- and shop­per-focused approach across all chan­nels.
  2. Glob­al com­pa­nies need to take note of the dif­fer­ences between high-growth and mature mar­kets, and retail­ers in gen­er­al needs to reassess the coun­tries where they are present and exer­cise cau­tion in any mar­ket entry strat­e­gy.
  3. Estab­lish process­es for inte­grat­ed mer­chan­dis­ing, order ful­fill­ment, and inven­to­ry man­age­ment across all chan­nels rather than indi­vid­ual chan­nel.
  4. Incre­men­tal­ly and iter­a­tive­ly grow via a “test and learn” approach to cus­tomer-cen­tric ini­tia­tives.
  5. Build orga­ni­za­tion­al struc­tures and goals around val­ue propo­si­tions that cut across all chan­nels, with incen­tive and com­mis­sion pro­grams to pro­mote cross-chan­nel sell­ing.
  6. Devel­op and imple­ment cross-chan­nel bench­marks and met­rics.

Inventiveness, Personalization, Future Thinking

Per­haps the best exam­ple of an indus­try that has thrown itself into con­sumer-cen­tric dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing is the fash­ion indus­try.

By adopt­ing a heav­i­ly cus­tomer-cen­tric focus, online fash­ion retail has effec­tive­ly turned the home into a fit­ting room, allow­ing cus­tomers to try, eval­u­ate, and eas­i­ly return goods should they wish to do so. With 71 per­cent of con­sumers indi­cat­ing that post-sale, the option to return goods eas­i­ly was extreme­ly impor­tant, mak­ing returns an easy and inte­gral part of the pur­chase promise pro­vides an lev­el of reas­sur­ance for online con­sumer pur­chas­es that can make the dif­fer­ence.

Kees Jacobs, Glob­al Dig­i­tal Propo­si­tion Lead at Capgem­i­ni Dig­i­tal Cus­tomer Expe­ri­ence, gave the fol­low­ing com­ment in an inter­view with big4.com:

Notably, fash­ion has seen more growth in dig­i­tal shop­ping than any oth­er cat­e­go­ry. Lead­ing the way in terms of inven­tive­ness and seg­men­ta­tion, fash­ion could be the chan­nel to essen­tial­ly dri­ve the dig­i­tal shop­ping expe­ri­ence even to appre­hen­sive con­sumers.”

As both tech­nol­o­gy and con­sumers con­tin­ue to evolve, inven­tive­ness and seg­men­ta­tion will be two areas that will sep­a­rate the best per­form­ing dig­i­tal brands from the aver­age per­form­ers. The abil­i­ty to offer new, per­son­al­ized shop­ping expe­ri­ences and oppor­tu­ni­ties for con­sumers to engage, will be a defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of suc­cess­ful dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing for years to come.

You can read Capgem­i­ni’s full Dig­i­tal Shop­per Rel­e­van­cy Research Report 2014 here.


Do you agree with Capgem­i­ni’s find­ings? Is social media real­ly in decline or is it just a momen­tary blip?

Pat Hong

Written by Pat Hong

Editor at Linkdex/Inked, Linkdex

Pat covers the SEO industry, digital marketing trends, and anything and everything around Linkdex. He also authors Linkdex's data analysis and reports, analysing the state of search in various industries.

Inked is published by Linkdex, the SEO platform of choice for professional marketers.

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