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Online Shoppers Aren't Impulsive
Rollie Hawk writes "When it comes to online shoppers, conventional wisdom has long been divided. Some have argued that the instant nature of shopping from home over the Internet leads to quick purchases while others have contended that easy price comparisons on the Web allow buyers to do more research first. For now, it looks like the latter camp is closer to the truth.
According to a press release by ScanAlert, online shoppers are more frugal than many retailers previously thought. According to their testing, 35% take more than 12 hours to make a purchase, 21% take more than three days, and 14% take more than a week. On the average, online shoppers take 19 hours to make a purchase after the initial visit.
This has some important marketing ramifications according to ScanAlert CEO Ken Leonard. "The implication to merchants is that the shopping cart is not just a convenience factor. It must be a comfort zone to shoppers. These results were not expected."
In the press release, Leonard advised online sellers that "consumers abandon shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers. Retailers must understand, however, that almost half of all online purchases are from shoppers who leave a site after the first visit, and return -- even days later -- to buy.""
This makes sense. When I worked at a phone answering job where I took orders, a lot of people would call up ask for information then hang up to order it on line. People use the Internet to order at their convenience rather than at the convenience of the seller.
I find that buying online is less impulsive because you have mountains of research to rely on.
Lets say I see (hmmm we're on Slashdot so I'll use the computer hardware example) a new component for my rig that I absolutely must have. I'll go through many reviews first to make sure it functions, is compatible, is priced correctly, and will be a good buy.
Now lets say I'm at the supermarket deciding between the S&S brand and a gourmet brand of food. No external input for consumption, so its more likely I'll buy the gourmet on the spot.
I'd say from initial liking to final purchase takes me nearly 36 hours.
I know that whenever I hit Amazon, I have something very specific in mind that I'm looking for that I couldn't find at a brick-and-morter. In fact, any time a BM tells me they have to special order it, I hit Amazon. I think a lot of people shop this way.
Its the same for other web. People who search for products on the web are usually looking for something specific. This is, in my opinion, one reason why click through ads don't work. Most clicks I find totally irrelevant. Actually, in 10 years I've never voluntarily followed a banner ad.
Seems I turn to the web more and more these days to find specialty items I know the warehouse BMs won't carry. I buy classical musically exclusively through Amazon because most of the smaller specialty retailers in my city have been put out of business by the WalMart/Costco style mega stores.
A few years back, there were 3 classical music CD shops around. A big megachain opened, and they dedicated an entire floor to classical and lowballed all prices trying to get the volume sale. These 3 independants went under, and shortly after that, the megachain closed down/vented their classical section.
Prolly off topic but it still bugs me.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Amazon.com makes it so easy to order stuff that it's dangerous to your credit card. Every once in a while I'll get on there and splurge. No filling out name, address, or credit card details. No logging in at all. They have a nice system.
I did 90% of my Christmas shopping there last year. Take that, parking lots! Take that, crowds of shoppers!
It's less effort to fill up a virtual shopping cart, and there's no issue with just walking away from it. Nothing says I can't pull a hundred items off the shelf at Safeway and then leave my cart in the isle, but it'll get me looked at funny and I'd feel guilty about making the staff restock everything. I have no qualms with wasting the time of a computer, though. So yeah, surprise surprise, the virtual metaphor ain't like the real thing.
This is where sites like Amazon that have a "save for later" feature for shopping carts are trumping other sites that only have minimal e-commerce functionality. If a customer isn't ready to buy, but can save an interesting item for easy access later, they will be more likely to come back to that merchant and make the purchase if the price is reasonable. In addition, the convenience of not having to root through the site to find the item again will improve the standing of the site in the eyes of the consumer, causing them to come back the next time they're interested in buying something.
Honestly, it surprises me that online merchants are surprised with how consumers ditch their shopping cart contents so often, in light of the fact that Amazon has had "save for later" functionality for years now, a feature that was probably added when they realized that their customers didn't always place an order right away.
On a side note, I like to keep one or two paperback books in my saved cart on Amazon so that when I order a DVD that's under $25, I can add the book and get free shipping.
A few years ago, outpost.com (and many other sites) had free overnight shipping and no sales tax. I could get an item almost as quickly as I could by going to the store, and usually get it cheaper too. Impulse buying was pretty easy.
Now, I usually let a bunch of items accumulate in my shopping cart at a site and then order so that I can save on shipping costs, and I don't usually bother with the fast shipping options. No more online impulse buying for me - except for songs from the iTunes store.
How do these numbers compare to in store purchasing habits?
Setting aside the difficulty of measuring these kinds of things, this study doesn't say anything about whether or not online purchasers are more impulsive than brick-mortar purchasers unless there's some sort of actual, quantitative comparison.
That said, anecdotally, I don't doubt that people are less impulsive online. When I go shopping in a physical store, I generally know what I want already and I've already done my research, but I'm much more tempted to buy something on display on a whim. Worse, because of the physical labor involved, I generally don't walk around the mall comparing prices. Online, on the other hand, I'll take weeks making a purchase in order to get the best deal and even though it's really easy to put other things in my basket, I don't find it to be nearly as tempting.
The exception to this is iTunes. There, I'm much more impulsive. "OOoh, 80's song I haven't heard in 20 years... (click)"
Humorless sig goes here.
"consumers abandon shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers"
Consumers abandon shopping carts? What about when I spend an hour shopping, have to go away for a day or so, and when I come back, my shopping cart has been deleted on the server-side? Now THAT's frustrating!
Personally, if I can't determine the exact shipping cost before I give my name and address (and maybe even my credit card number), then I go elsewhere.
If the site sets an over priced shipping cost for each item and just adds the shipping costs together if multiple items are bought (greatly inflating prices from the actual shipping cost), I'm inclined to not buy from them at all, but certainly I will not be buying a lot.
Because buyers do shop, it is extremely helpful for both buyer and seller to have real time inventory information posted on the website and actually show the buyer how many of an item are available. More than once a vendor has lost a complete sale when I saw an item I wanted but waited until I could order some other items also, had put several items in my "cart", and then gone to add the item that I really wanted and that had induced me to buy from them, only to find that it was no longer in stock. Had I been able to see inventory numbers I might have known it was selling out and bought faster, instead I just dropped my entire combined order. Even worse are vendors who you can't tell if the item is in stock or not from an on-line website in this computer age.
The seller who charges actual shipping costs, or even actual shipping costs plus a buck or two for costs like the box, if far more likely to gey my business and repeat business than the seller who looks at shipping as a profit center.
Sellers who play games with shipping costs by greatly varying them for very similar size and weight items (you know who you are, Newegg) actually discourage a lot of sales. Why it costs $2.99 to ship some pcmcia cards, even $1.00 to ship some, but $5 to ship others that are on the same size box and of the same weight makes no sense at all (and even less sense if I want to buy 4 and the shipping jumps to %20).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.