We're just past the half-way point of June and the projections for the online holiday shopping season are already starting to come in.
Let's define shopping for a moment, as represented by Advertising.com's second annual online holiday shopping study, cited by marketingcharts.com. It's referring to the entire process, not only the point-of-purchase. So it's talking about when people start doing online research to where they make an actual purchase.
In the survey itself, it found that 84 percent of consumers plan on spending as much time online as they did during the 2006 season. The length of the period is also increasing as 50 percent said they will start doing their shopping and research in October or earlier. That constrasts with the 44 percent who said in 2006 they wouldn't start their shopping until after Thanksgiving.
Concerning the actual time they will purchase, 77 percent of study respondents said they would wait until November of December to make their purchases.
“The holiday season no longer starts in Q4, with consumers beginning their shopping earlier and earlier,” said Lynda Clarizio, president of Advertising.com. “To fully capitalize on this lengthy shopping season, advertisers should look to leverage marketing tactics for each stage of the consumer purchase cycle - such as online video to build awareness, search marketing to drive traffic, and behavioral retargeting and late-season incentives to close conversions.”
Another important insight from the study is consumers still tend to do their research online and buy in retail stores afterward, with 57 percent saying this is their perferred way of buying goods.
Everything is continuing to integrate across offline and online platforms. We are increasingly challenged to look at shopping as a long-term process going on over a several month period now. Building our entire holiday campaigns around this reality is a must.
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