Consumer Behavior
A deep dive look at the 2021 holiday shopping retail experience
The 2021 holiday season is proving challenging to retailers and consumer behavior is playing a big part. FullStory CMO Kirsten Newbold-Knipp provides a deep dive into this year's holiday customer experience.
December 3, 2021 by Judy Mottl — Editor, RetailCustomerExperience.com & DigitalSignageToday.com
Just like the holiday season of 2020, this holiday season is unlike no other. While shoppers are returning to stores, retailers are finding it hard to provide stocked shelves due to the ongoing supply chain challenges worldwide.
In fact one recent survey reveals stores are in disarray and shopping in-store is on the decline, despite the fact COVID vaccinations rates continue to increase and consumers are more comfortable venturing out to retail shops and dining.
The survey from FullStory, which polled 1,600 U.S. consumers does offer one bright spot — consumers may be starting their holiday purchase search online (Amazon, Etsy) and venturing to other retail sites when shopping. But that's only good news if retailers have shored up their online customer experience from start to finish — according to the survey more than half, 55%, are unlikely to return to a retailer who provides a poor digital experience.
The study states shoppers have already experienced an array of in-store challenges, including out of stock items and sizes (59%), a scarcity of staff to help in stores (50%) and inadequate COVID precautions (41%). In fact, 46% of consumers say shopping in the store is worse than it was prior to the pandemic, and a mere 12% say the experience has improved.
Retail Customer Experience reached out to FullStory CMO Kirsten Newbold-Knipp to get deeper insight on the study results as well as what she expects to happen with the retail experience this holiday season.
Q. This holiday season will see more consumers in stores after 18 months of COVID. What should retailers be doing that they didn't do in the past to welcome, embrace and engage?
A. The pandemic forever changed how consumers relate to brands. The National Retail Federation predicts 75% of holiday spending this year will be in-store, compared with 73% in 2020. So while there's a slight uptick in foot traffic, digital is set to maintain its hold on more than one in five dollars spent during the holidays.
In part, that's due to positive online experiences during the pandemic. In FullStory's recent survey of 1,600 U.S. consumers, 32% of respondents said online shopping has improved since the beginning of the pandemic, and 88% rated digital experiences now as being as good or better than before COVID-19.
The inverse is true for in-store shopping: 46% of survey respondents said store experiences have gotten worse since the pandemic started, and only 12% say they've improved.
Turning around that negative perception will be an uphill battle this season — but if retailers can embrace consumers' digital-first mindset and accept that online interactions are the glue that holds together holiday brand experiences, they have a better chance of success.
In fact, our survey found that three-quarters of consumers are interested in — or would prefer — hybrid shopping options. That means not just fulfillment services such as in-store and curbside pickup, but hybrid experiences in the aisles. Among the ways to connect digital and in-store experiences are mobile navigation aids that help shoppers find items faster, QR codes on store shelves and displays that link to product information, online video demos that play on store screens or kiosks, and even augmented-reality try-on experiences.
Yet digital innovation can easily turn into digital frustration for consumers who experience bugs, glitches, or confusion in navigating and using new capabilities. These types of problems may only emerge for certain segments or situations, making them impossible to catch in advance before they erode sales and trust. Retailers need to make sure that they have digital experience intelligence to surface previously unknown problems and opportunities in real time to identify and prioritize fixes and adjustments that can make or break the success of these hybrid capabilities.
Q. Given 46% said the in-store experience has declined — any specific reasons or issues that pertain to that consumer sentiment? Is it the shelves being light on product or the labor shortage retailers are dealing with and has led to less associates in the store?
A. It is definitely a combination of factors. Our survey found that as of late September, nearly six in 10 consumers had already encountered out-of-stock items and sizes, while half have been unable to find store associates to help them when needed. COVID transmission is also still a concern: 41% report that store safety measures weren't being followed.
Many of these problems are beyond retailers' control. Unless you have the resources to charter your own cargo fleet, holiday inventory is dependent on supply chain issues that span the globe. Plus, hiring bonuses can only do so much to stem "the great resignation" that employers in every sector are experiencing.
The immediate best solution is transparency — and that's where digital has the opportunity to shine. Retailers should use every touchpoint at their disposal to convey information about stockouts and store shortages and encourage patience and COVID safety. Consumers now expect this kind of proactive action: as one example, when online shopping, 60% of consumers want to know products are out of stock before reaching the shopping cart, and more than half want to be notified when items are available again.
These inventory visibility tools can not only help online shoppers, but also store associates, who can locate and offer items from other store locations to save the sale. Store associates can also offer available alternatives, which 65% of survey respondents said they wanted to know about when products were out of stock.
Q. As consumers are heading back into the store this holiday season what do retailers need to do to engage that consumer and extend the visit and propel more visits?
A. Given that holiday shopping will be a hybrid experience, from first search to final order, it's crucial for retailers to gain insight into the what and the why of shoppers' digital interactions.
With digital experience intelligence, retailers can understand the context around potential abandonment, see where drop-offs and comparison shopping occur, and identify where glitches cause frustrations.
This type of intelligence is especially critical given that holiday shoppers are less likely to be tolerant of online hurdles. Three in 10 survey respondents said online errors during the holidays are more frustrating than at other times of the year, compared with just 7% who are more forgiving during the peak season.
When shoppers encounter glitches, retailers aren't just at risk of losing a single gift purchase. Not only will 77% of consumers abandon transactions when issues crop up, but more than half are unlikely to return.
Q. With consumers embracing the mobile device more than ever when it comes to shopping, what should retailers be focused on to make that experience as engaging and enjoyable as possible and are most retailers putting mobile CX as a prime focus or is it lagging in terms of attention?
A.The importance of mobile experiences can't be overstated. More than a third of consumers rely primarily on their phones for online shopping, while another 58% do at least half of their online shopping via mobile. But most retailers still have a ways to go to deliver the stable, swift, and seamless mobile experiences that shoppers expect.
In fact, 46% of respondents in our survey reported that mobile shopping experiences are more prone to glitches than shopping on a computer.
Heavy mobile shoppers are more likely to encounter basic errors. For example, 42% of mobile-first shoppers said the problems they most frequently encounter are site pages that fail to load, take too long to appear, or are missing. By contrast, just 35% of shoppers overall report these problems are frequent — signaling a major performance gap between mobile and desktop. Heavy mobile users are also more likely to have difficulty locating the right products and sizes and shipping information, and navigating the site overall.
To close that gap, retailers should do their utmost to boost mobile site speed — from testing content delivery network integrations ahead of the holiday surge to boosting the speed of free in-store wi-fi to ease blended digital/physical interactions. They should also implement best practices for design and layout of popular features, including prominent SKU options and shipping timelines, carousel-type displays that are easy to swipe through, and expandable accordion layouts for product details. Checkout is a crucial sticking point, so retailers should test alternative payment integrations, provide tap-to-call and tap-to-chat access to customer service, and even consider initiating proactive chat sessions for shoppers who are stuck within checkout.
About Judy Mottl
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from Retail Customer Experience.
