Moving...

Hello all,

I've decided to move Research Smeesearch away from Blogger. I just don't like it and consequently I find myself dreading the drudgery of posting here.

I am moving Research Smeesearch to Tumblr. Tumblr ROCKS.

So, check out new material and the odds and ends that I find during daily research here: RESEARCH SMEESEARCH
Peace Out,
Marcy

Customer Expectations

From the E-tailing Group:

Online shoppers want smooth shopping, free delivery and bargains

Online shoppers find site search the most useful element of a retail web site by a wide margin, says a new consumer survey from Chicago-based consultants and researchers The E-tailing Group Inc.

In fact keyword search, rated “very to most important” by 80% of consumers in the survey, and advanced search functionality, rated so by 67%, were the most highly ranked web site features. Next was product comparison tools, also at 67%, and customer ratings and reviews, at 60%.

Consumers use such tools frequently in their online shopping, the survey reports. 65% research products online before making gift purchases, 74% typically comparison shop three sites or more before making a purchase, 60% search directly at a favored merchant, and 54% browse multiple online stores before completing a purchase.

Consumers, no surprise, value bargains: 86% want free shipping and 76% want sales and specials, the E-tailing study reports. And they rank streamlined shopping highly. 69% want a perpetual shopping cart and 60% want one-page checkout.

What The E-tailing Group dubs “gifting tools” also are growing in importance to online shoppers. 47% want to be able to buy gift cards online vs. 43% a year ago; 41% want to send the different elements of a purchase to different addresses vs. 33% a year ago; and 31% want to create wish lists vs. 26% a year ago.

The survey of 1,500 online consumers who responded to an online questionnaire, also showed:
• 68% plan to spend about the same as last year;
• 44% anticipate spending in the $100-$500 range; 44% over $500;
• 53% intend to purchase 16 or more gifts;
• 74% expect to purchase about the same number of gifts online as last year.

The questionnaire, conducted by The E-tailing Group in October 2007 in conjunction with StartSampling, also asked consumers to name positive or negative experiences about shopping online. As positives, consumers cited free shipping and bargains; as negatives, high shipping costs or other shipping problems, return problems and out-of-stocks. But on a bright note, the E-tailing Group reported that more than half said they had had too many good experiences to name one or had not experienced anything too terrible while shopping online.

“These responses challenge merchants to push those shopping online to buy more and entice those who prefer the store encounter to venture online via a more engaging experience,” says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-tailing Group. “This will be accomplished by creating exciting, fun, easy-to-shop environments with desired products in-stock coupled by relentless customer service starting with timely, reasonably priced delivery. Ultimately customers try the web, become hooked on the convenience and continue to up the ante, increasing their spending throughout the year.”

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Holiday Shopping Predictions 2007

Had a request for some data about top categories for Holiday 2007 this morning....so, I'll play "sharesies" and post the nuggets here:

HOLIDAY 2007 PREDICTIONS:

Forrester Research: 2007 Online Holiday Retail Sales To Hit $33 Billion
Monday October 15, 5:20 pm ET

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--US online retail sales this holiday season will reach $33 billion, a 21 percent increase over last year, according to Forrester Research, Inc.. The survey of 2,500 online consumers analyzed spending plans across eight retail categories.

Among the findings of this year's survey:

• Apparel and accessories will top holiday shopping lists -- 80 percent of respondents said that they would purchase something in this category online during the upcoming holiday season.
• A majority of consumers have a continued interest in free shipping promotions -- 61 percent of online consumers said that they are more likely to shop online with a retailer that offers free shipping.
• Fewer consumers are willing to pay for "frills" like gift wrap or overnight delivery this year -- only 26 percent of consumers said they would pay for expedited delivery prior to the holiday season, down from 45 percent who said they would do so in 2006.
• Gift cards promise to be a big winner during the 2007 holiday season -- 18 percent of online consumers said that they plan to spend more on gift cards this year, compared with last year.

"Retailers should have an action plan in place for how best to take advantage of gift cards following Christmas and through January, which is known to be the most active redemption period," said Forrester Research Principal Analyst Sucharita Mulpuru. "Online retailers that are ready to capture those customers will likely be able to maintain relatively strong sales, in spite of the traditional Q1 seasonal dip."

Forrester defines the holiday shopping season as the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

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National Retail Federation:

There will be plenty of popular items on consumer wish lists this holiday season, but the most sought-after category appears to be the most practical: gift cards. This year, more than half (53.8%) of consumers want to receive a gift card or gift certificate as a holiday gift, though they won’t be the only item on shoppers’ wish lists. Consumers also want everything from clothing and accessories (50.1%) to books, CDs, DVDs, videos and video games (50.8%).

Other popular categories include consumer electronics or computer-related accessories (36.4%), jewelry (23.8%) and home décor or home-related furnishings (22.0%).

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Consumer Reports:

• The number one gift consumers are planning to buy for the 2007 holiday season is clothing (71%). That was the category of gifts received in 2006 that triggered the most disappointment among recipients (38%). Fifty percent of men said they were disappointed to receive various types of clothing for the 2006 holidays including socks, sweaters and shirts.

• The number two gift consumers are planning to buy for 2007 is gift cards (62%), followed by electronics (53%).

• This year, the Consumer Reports Holiday Shopping Poll results suggest that gift-givers may want to opt for electronics. The poll found that consumers would most like to receive electronics gifts (19%), followed by gift cards (12%). Men, by far, wanted electronics the most (25%). The top gifts women want are gift cards (15%) and electronics (13%).

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Consumer Electronics Association:

The latest proof comes from a study done by the Consumer Electronics Association. Its latest annual holiday buyers survey shows that consumer electronics products should "dominate the holiday wish lists of adults and teens, and will generate $48.1 billion in fourth quarter sales".

“Consumer electronics will be the shining star of holiday retail sales, accounting for 22 percent of all gifts given,” says CEA Economist Shawn DuBravac. “Two of the top five items on adults’ holiday wish lists are consumer electronics, and four of the top five items on the teen list are CE devices, so today’s hottest technologies will be on every holiday shopper’s mind. Holiday sales will be particularly jolly for the video game category (hardware and software), laptop computers and the endless array of accessories available for your favorite product.”

The top five wish list items for all adult survey respondents: computers, peace and happiness, big screen TV, clothes and money. Notably, the big screen TV moved up in the 2007 survey to number three from 11th in 2006. The teen list remained unchanged: clothes, MP3 player, video games, computer and cell phone.

“While overall holiday spending will increase, we found consumers are cutting back on decorations, home purchases and travel, but not gifts, especially electronics. The average CE gift giver will spend $358 on those gifts this season,” adds DuBravac.

CEA forecasts $22.1 billion will be spent on holiday CE gifts this year, which represents 46 percent of total fourth quarter revenue for consumer electronics. Total fourth quarter sales will reach $48.1 billion – a seven-percent increase from $44.8 billion in 2006.

The survey also tracked specific consumer electronics consumers hope to receive. The top five CE gifts adults wish for are MP3 players, notebook/laptops, video game systems, digital cameras and any type of TV. For teens, MP3 players, digital cameras, notebook/laptops, computers and any type of TV round out the top five items on their wish list.

Leading the “planned gift” list this year – a list of the CE products respondents intend to purchase for someone else -- are video game systems, additional memory for cameras, MP3 players, DVD players and digital cameras.

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I've been a bad, bad blogger...

Geez! It's been a while since I've posted here on ResearchSmeesearch. I could offer up tons of excuses as to the circumstances surrounding my absence - the chief one of course would be that I've been absorbed with work and have been knockin' back the workahol like crazy. But I think I'll use the writing energy to actually post.

I found this quote today that really resonated with me:
"Consumers are statistics. Customers are people." - Stanley Marcus (via Forrester's Bruce Temkin)

I also found this today... Michelle Lamar on Emerging Customer said in a post about The Age of Conversation,
"To gain a potential customer's attention or willingness to try our product/service -- we're going to need to extend our hand first. Cynicism and too many choices put every business owner/marketer at a huge disadvantage. We're going to have to earn their trust before we earn their business."

Here, here!!!

Now I simply must go get The Age of Conversation!
"The Age of Conversation, brings together over 100 of the world’s leading marketers, writers, thinkers and creative innovators in a ground-breaking and unusual publication."

Let us use our brains!!!

via Creating Passionate Users

It's called Transparency...look into it.

A friend shared a post from the guys over at BlueLine that I just loved. It starts out with -

Sometimes, it seems, getting people to see the beauty in putting their marketing dollars toward finding their clients and creating a dialogue with them is a little like getting an alcoholic to switch to Kool Aid; they know it would be better for them, cost them less in the long run and they would not run the risk of saying something they didn’t intend and inadvertently turn everyone in the room off…

Like kicking the bottle, switching from talking to your customers to talking with them takes vision and something to replace the old habit with.

I totally agree. However, there is danger lurking when the folks at the helm have merely caught on to a few buzz words like "Community" and "User Generated Content". They have no real clue about what Transparency really means and they go about the business of trying to build a "community experience" because it's cool and it will for sure make them a lot of money. What's truly sad is that they don't realize that the community that they're trying to reach is going to smell the cheesy, and dare I say sleazy, ploy from a mile away.

It's not just about marketing spend. It's about embracing the notion of transparency within the corporate walls first. If the culture within the company isn't transparent and open communication is either non-existent or stifled, then the marketing department is going to be hard pressed to create that environment of trust outside those corporate walls.

There are a few quotes from the Cluetrain Manifesto that are among my favorites:

Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open conversation kills companies.

Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to the people with whom they hope to create relationships.

To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of their community. But first, they must belong to a community.

If the company tries to take the leap of joining the community within the market place without first having a healthy and well-developed sense of transparency and openness inside the business, then their efforts are most certainly going to blow up in their collective faces.

Inside the company:

Transparency builds trust; trust builds interest; and interest builds a commited workforce who is truly invested in seeing a vision through to fruition.

Outside the company:

Transparency builds trust; trust builds interest; and interest builds an audience who is willing to share their ideas and and engage in a relationship with the company selling to them.

It's called Transparency...look into it.

Top Email Days

Interesting...I wouldn't have thought the day after Christmas would be No. 1. Also thought "tax day" was interesting.

Holidays Are Popular for E-Mail Marketing - eMarketer:

The biggest day of the year in 2006 for US retail e-mail marketers was the day after Christmas, according to E-Mail Experience Council data cited in Marketing Charts. More than 53% of retailers tracked in the study sent e-mail on December 26.

The day is favored for capturing added sales from returns as well as gift card and e-gift card sales as quickly as possible.

Other popular days with e-mail marketers included Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) and days related to holidays they preceded, such as Mother's Day, Father's Day, President's Day, Valentine's Day, Easter and Tax Day.

E-mails were sent on Tax Day (April 17 in 2006) to get sales from tax refunds.

None of the 20 most popular e-mail days fell in July, August, September or October."

Widgets Big with UGC Crowd - eMarketer

I've been sayin' (along with everyone else) that widgets are where it's at. In the list below via eMarketer, I see a couple of favorites Slide and Photobucket (used Photobucket to create the video in the post just below this one in fact). I have to admit there are others on that list though that I've not explored and some that I haven't even heard of...so, I'll have to check 'em out.

Widgets Big with UGC Crowd

Big buzz for tiny tools.

North Americans lead the world in Web widget usage, according to comScore data.

Widgets are used to display customized or personalized content on a Web site for things like photo sharing or music recommendations, and are commonly found on blogs, social networking sites and other personalized pages.

Four in 10 North American Internet users visited Web sites with embedded widgets in April 2007. Eastern Europeans had comparative widget disdain, with only 7.6% of Internet users in the region using the tools.

The most-used widgets worldwide were mainly photo-related. Slide was the top widget provider, with a worldwide reach of more than 117 million unique viewers, or 13.8% of the total worldwide Internet audience.

The use of widgets on photo-sharing Web sites is not surprising, since such sites are a vibrant and growing sector of the user-generated economy.

The number of US Internet users who posted photos online more than doubled between 2003 and 2006, according to the USC Annenberg School Center for the Digital Future's "2007 Digital Future Project," published in November 2006.

comScore noted that Facebook's overtures to third-party widget developers would likely spur activity in the sector as well.

Learn where all those photos are being posted online. Read the eMarketer User-Generated Content: Will Web 2.0 Pay Its Way? report.

We Celebrate!

I have the distinct pleasure of working for a really great company. Here's some video of the cool people that I work with being recognized for an amazing amount work and a job well done on our CMS build. Personal Shopper ROCKS!

Web Wins for Women Shopping Online - eMarketer

via eMarketer
Web Wins for Women Shopping Online
Women visit fewer sites to learn what they want.

Over half of US female Internet users ages 25 and older say the Internet is their main research source for checking out potential product purchases, according to Burst Media's "Online Insight" report, published June 2007.

The Internet was named far more often than other methods. Around 10% or fewer of respondents said they got their information from "asking family and friends," newspapers and magazines, television or other sources.

Over half of women said they had shopped online in the past six months. Online shopping increased with household income. About half of respondents with annual incomes of less than $35,000 had bought something online in the past six months, while 68% of households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more had done so.

Major online buying categories for women in the past six months included travel, adult clothing and health and beauty products.

Although women consider the Internet a prime source for product information, they use slightly fewer Web sites on average in their research than men, according to Frank About Women's "Understanding Online Shopping Behavior Topline Summary," published in March 2006.

Adult female Internet users typically visited four or more Web sites in the course of doing product research, while men used an average of nearly five.

Learn more about marketing for women with the Web. Read the eMarketer Women Online: Taking a New Look report.