Monday, January 30, 2012

Fighting for Customers

Getting them into your store is only half the battle. Once there, you still have a lot of work to do. Pew's latest research shows just how much--especially if the customer is under age 50. In the past month, 48 percent of cell phone owners used their phone while in a store to call a friend and ask for advice about a purchase or used their phone to look up product reviews online. Here are the percentages by age...

18-49: 63%
30-49: 59%
50-64: 36%
65-plus: 24%

One in four cell phone owners used their phone while in a store to check prices elsewhere. Among those who did, only 35 percent ultimately bought the product from the store. Thirty-seven percent decided not to purchase the product at all, 19 percent bought it online instead, and 8 percent bought the product from another physical store.

Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project, How American Used Their Phones to Assist with Purchasing Decisions this Holiday Season

1 comment:

Ann Marie said...

This got me thinking that the next step in retail might be small stores with limited inventory. Lots of small local places where people pay a small fee to come and try on clothing, handle goods, ask questions, and then order online for overnight or two-day delivery (for a fee) or access same-day delivery from a local warehouse (for a bigger fee). My 23-year-old daughter shops that way for some things. The jeans she likes are rarely in stock in the two chain stores that carry the brand. So once she’s figured out what she likes, she orders it online. Or she’ll spend three weeks online researching the possibilities and identify a store that has what she wants to try on, because she doesn’t like to return things she’s ordered online.
It might even be that one would make an appointment to see whatever had been identified as interesting. Or one could could treat a clothing “mini-store” sort of like a model home, with ensembles/motifs that change out every week or two – and the floor “models” could then be sold at a discount.
Thanks for a stimulating bit of info!