Using multichannel customer care to maximize the holiday shopping season

Tags: Multichannel Retailing, Online Retailing, Technology

Type: White Paper

There are only a few months left until Christmas, which means a countdown to the most important sales season for online and multichannel retailers. Over the past few years the overall revenue generated from in-store retail sales has been in decline, while online revenues have been on the rise. Jupiter Research reports that online retail continues to remain insulated from economic factors and multichannel retailers must use this to their advantage during the 2008 holiday shopping season. In 2007, Black Friday saw $531 million in online retail spending, up 22% from 2006. Following the same trend, this year Cyber Monday is expected to see over $700 million in online spending, making it the largest online shopping day on record. The Christmas holidays are the busiest online shopping season and the time when online retailers can maximize their revenues, traditionally earning over 32% of all annual online sales within this short time.

E-commerce continues to become more customer focused by integrating better search features, improving shopping carts and faster shipping and return policies. Rising gas prices and the Internet’s growing ease of use make online shopping a favorable alternative to joining the swarm of shoppers at the local mall. In fact, Foresee Results Holiday Season Survey reports that compared to last year shoppers are 7.5% less likely to purchase offline from the retailer in the future, and are significantly more likely to purchase off the company’s website.