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Report says social media less important in the shopping process than two years ago

According to the report, compared to 2012, less importance is being placed on following retailers on social media, finding out about new products through blogs, and participating in online retail customer communities.

September 26, 2014

A new report by Capgemini reveals that consumers consider social media a less important part of their customer journey — from awareness, through to post-sale activity — compared to two years ago. The second edition of the “Digital Shopper Relevancy Report,” which surveyed over 18,000 digital shoppers from 18 countries, shows that conversely, smartphone shopping has grown in importance over the same period. The report also highlights that the Internet is now globally the preferred channel to inform retail decisions (over all other channels, including stores), with 75 percent of consumers saying it was important or very important to shopping research.

According to the report, compared to 2012, less importance is being placed on following retailers on social media, finding out about new products through blogs, and participating in online retail customer communities. The responses of global shoppers indicate not only a decline compared with the study two years ago, but also demonstrate that social media is less important to the shopper journey compared with conventional retail store experiences, web, smartphone, email or the use of technologies in-store.

Capgemini’s survey shows that for point-of-sale the physical store is still the favored destination for global shoppers, but only just, with the Internet trailing slightly. When carrying out retail transactions, 72 percent of shoppers see the store as important or very important compared to 67 percent for the Internet. Only 14 percent of shoppers strongly indicate that physical stores have become less important for them. However, in the future, the majority of shoppers (51 percent) say they will spend more money online than in-store. In addition to the smartphone’s ubiquitous growth, in-store digital interactions (eg via kiosks) are popular among shoppers.

The research reveals that high growth markets all show a significantly stronger preference for digital technologies than mature markets. For example, when it comes to searching for product information, doing price-comparisons and purchasing products, Brazil, Mexico, India and China all place a much greater importance on the smartphone, social media and in-store technology than all of the mature markets polled. High-growth markets are also significantly more interested in receiving personalized offers and recommendations, with India (46 percent), Mexico (40 percent) and Brazil (38 percent) rating them as "extremely important." This is in stark contrast to the equivalent statistics for the UK (13 percent), France (15 percent) and Germany (24 percent).

Globally, over a third of consumers feel they currently are not being provided with clear information from retailers on how their personal data is going to be used. Personal expectations regarding retailers are low: one in four consumers do not expect their favorite retailers to know their history to provide better service, particularly in Canada, Finland, Netherlands and Sweden. While half do trust their favorite retailers to use their personal data responsibly, a third does not agree to their social media data being used by retailers, particularly in the Nordic countries.