Topic of the week – The Importance of Omnichannel Shopping
As we all know, consumers have many ways of shopping online now, through mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets, desktop computers, laptops, even through social media and more. Having an integrated approach that creates a seamless shopping experience through all of these channels even leading to brick and mortar stores, has been shown to boost sales with omnichannel shopping becoming increasingly popular. But what is omnichannel shopping? What are the benefits? Let’s get into it.
Not to be confused with Multichannel retailing, an Ominchannel approach delivers a consistent brand experience across all channels that the customer can purchase from or has an interaction with your company. It focuses on an integrated approach that optimizes cohesive data and systems throughout the business and a diverse set of channels. Throughout the years an omnichannel approach to retailing has been seeping its way into more and more businesses with the number of touchpoints that a consumer would use during the buying process increasing from 2 to 6 within 15 years. In a study from eMarketer, they observed that by 2025 eCommerce sales will reach almost 24% of total retail sales by 2025 with a 15.9% change in growth from 2022 to 2023. This acceleration in growth is consistent with the acceleration in changing consumer behaviour since the COVID-19 pandemic, where more and more consumers moved online.
Research from ESW has shown that omnichannel shoppers make more purchases than multichannel or single channel, spending over 15% more per year when observing over 18,000 consumers across 18 countries. This research also highlighted that from online consumers spending between $3,500 and $4,999 per year, 66% of them were omnichannel consumers. ESW’s report also showed that globally, the most omnichannel shoppers reside within the UAE, India and South Africa.
Whilst consumer behaviour and needs are evolving and changing across the board, the leaders of omnichannel shopping reside with Millennials. With over 22%YOY, 58% of millennials research, purchase and return cross-channel. This demographic is followed by Gen Z with 53% being omnichannel shoppers, and Gen X at 46%. It seems that omnichannel shopping is also popular amongst certain sectors, with consumer electronics, cosmetics, and toys/games being the top three categories most purchased using omnichannel shopping methods. The importance of omnichannel shopping hasn’t just been recognised by consumers, with retailers in North America and Europe noticing the importance of an omnichannel strategy. 47% of eCommerce companies in North America and Europe thought that adopting omnichannel shopping strategies was ‘Very Important’ with 20% believing it is ‘Quite Important’ according to Statista.
Overall, the necessity of providing an omnichannel shopping experience to consumers is increasing with more and more online retailers either implementing this strategy into their business model or at least having it on their radar. However, with the rate of consumer behaviour changing constantly, omnichannel shopping may become an industry standard in the future.
In other news
The AI train is continuing full steam ahead as Coveo’s 2024 report shows that over 70% of consumers expect generative AI to improve the online shopping experience. 72% of consumers from the study expect generative AI to play a huge role in the pre-purchase education stage of the customer journey including virtual shopping assistance and increasing social media shopping experiences. True Fit has announced the launch of its new Fit Hub, which utilizes generative AI to enhance the customer experience by finding their perfect fit for clothing items from fashion retailers. The platform uses AI to condense all of the sizing and fit information from a retailers website, combining this with personal sizing recommendations and filtering through customer reviews in order to determine the best fit and sizing recommendations for the specific consumer.
eCommerce Market Stats
See some statistics relating to this week’s topics in the eCommerce market below.
Omnichannel Shopping Stats
Popular Omnichannel Shopping Sectors
- Consumer electronics – 60%
- Cosmetics – 58%
- Hobbies, Toys & Games – 58%
- Footwear – 56%
Largest product category increase YOY
- Luxury – 36%
- Consumer electronics – 30%
- Cosmetics – 26%
- Footwear – 22%
Omnichannel use increase YOY by demographic
- Millennials – 22%
- Gen X – 13%
*Statistics sourced from ModernRetail
That’s all for this week…
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