Holiday Shopping in the Digital Age

This much is true: your customers are online, and they’re shopping. The holiday shopping season is in full swing, and more consumers are making their purchases online than ever before. The importance of Black Friday is waning while Cyber Monday has taken on a new moniker: Cyber Week. Just yesterday, AdExchanger reported that "online sales were higher than in-store sales over the holiday weekend."
 
Business Insider recently reported that there are three major developments around the Holiday Shopping trend:

  • Overall foot traffic in physical retail stores has fallen significantly in the period between Thanksgiving Day and Sunday, November 30.

  • Mobile commerce saw a very sharp increase over the period.

  • ‘Cyber-Saturday’ has proven itself to be a formidable holiday shopping day on par with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. 

The majority of the biggest shopping days of the year now come after Black Friday and run all the way to the day after Christmas. comScore is forecasting that total online spending for the 2014 holiday shopping season will reach $61 billion, a 16% increase over 2013.

 

“This year, eMarketer estimates that 8.4% of retail sales will be digital, compared with 6.5% for 2014 in total,” according to eMareketer’s Holiday Shopping Preview. “Driven by mobile commerce and greater consumer confidence for shopping online, ecommerce continues to pull retail sales forward. eMarketer projects that retail sales will increase 5.0% in the 2014 holiday season, an improvement over last year’s growth of 3.4%. eMarketer expects this stronger overall retail climate, along with long-term trends toward digital commerce, to drive ecommerce sales up 16.6%, compared with last year’s growth of 15.3%.”

Just days after a sluggish Black Friday for brick and mortar retailers, the LA Times reported that “many Americans will increasingly turn to online shopping for their holiday gift needs. Online sales jumped 25% to $1.33 billion on Thanksgiving Day and 24% to $2.4 billion on Friday, according to a report by Adobe Systems Inc., a digital research firm. Online sales from Nov. 1 to 28 grew 14% to $32 billion.” Consumers with significant discretionary dollars are even more likely to spend electronically. According to eMarketer, “among US consumers with a household income of $100,000 or more, 45% planned to do their holiday shopping online, while 35% said they’d do so in-store.”
 
The important question remains: Is your brand connecting with these online shoppers during the time of year that their discretionary spending is at it highest point? Are you maximizing your return on ad spend (ROAS) and finding the efficient frontier of your online campaign now? Across our client roster, FASTG8 is seeing direct-to-consumer, ecommerce partners experience significant revenue gains and increased campaign performance by striking while the iron is hot.

Comment