The Leading Retail Circular Websites Showed an Increase of 27 Percent in Shoppers Contributing to a 43 Percent increase in Page Views
CHICAGO – Nov 27, 2009 - ShopLocal™, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI), and the leader in multi-channel marketing services, is reporting a record breaking 27 percent rise in traffic to top retailers’ online circular sites as consumers prepared for their Black Friday shopping expeditions. Sale offers increased by 13 percent over last year and consumers responded in larger numbers and also increased their page views per visit by 12 percent. Retailers facilitated all of this as they not only offered a higher volume of promotions but an unprecedented number of major retailers also announced sales early.
“More than ever, consumers are using the internet to save themselves time and money by pre-planning their visits to local stores,” said Vikram Sharma, CEO of ShopLocal. “Throughout the past year consumers have tightened their belts and sought out deals, and we expect the trend will continue during the holidays. Retailers delivered holiday promotions earlier, inspiring more consumers to take advantage of the extended previews of holiday shopping deals and plan their purchases,” added Sharma.
Consumer activity on the ShopLocal circular sites peaked on Wednesday at 9 a.m., then again on Thursday at 9 p.m. as consumers solidified their shopping plans for Friday. The Thursday night peak set an all-time record for ShopLocal circular site activity with over 12.7 million page views in a single hour, surpassing the previous record which was also set at 9 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day.
Unlike last year (2008) when recession fears curbed holiday spending, pent-up demand has led to consumers viewing more sale content than ever. The increased traffic to ShopLocal circular sites is being driven by increased consumer interest and retailer marketers who are pushing more promotions earlier. Consumers visiting these sites are expected to make the majority of their purchases in children’s toys, electronic products, and continue the trend of stay-cations and home improvements.
The latest and greatest promotions from retailers can be found on www.ShopLocal.com and information about holiday shopping trends is available at the ShopLocal blog: www.shoplocalblog.com.
About ShopLocal
ShopLocal (www.AboutShopLocal.com), leader in multi-channel marketing services, offers a complete suite of innovative digital solutions that connect advertisers and consumers – online and in-store. ShopLocal’s industry-leading SmartProduct business solutions (SmartCircular, SmartCatalog and SmartDelivery) enable more than one hundred of the nation’s top retailers, including Target, Best Buy, Home Depot, CVS, Albertsons and Sears, to deliver highly interactive, targeted and localized promotions to shoppers through online circulars, display advertising, search, social media, digital out of home and mobile. ShopLocal is the retail division of PointRoll, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gannett Company.
As more people become comfortable with the concept of social media they begin to venture into the social media waters. At first it may be a little usage of LinkedIn for business connections, then a little dabling with Facebook and before they know it they are full blown social junkies with tweets and re-tweets on Twitter.
Pew Internet recently released it’s social networking report Twitter and Status Updating, Fall 2009. They found that there are three primary groups of internet users that are driving the growth of social media: social network website users, mobile/smart phone users, and users under the age of 44.
Perhaps the most exciting piece of information in the study is the average age of social network users. The release of the Pew Internet study set the internet abuzz, and spawned the Twitter trending topics of “Facebook 33″ “Twitter 31″ and “Myspace 26.” Twitter users commented on the topic and re-tweeted “The average age of social media users are as follows: Linkedln 39; Twitter 31; MySpace 26; Facebook 33.”
For more in-depth information I’ll refer you to Sarah Perez’s article at Read Write Web.
So what does one learn by processing of all the print ads for the top 100 or so US retailers? Quite a lot about the makeup of a circular ad. For example, during the one year period from 9/1/2008 thru 8/31/2009 ShopLocal found that the:
ShopLocal has the unique ability to measure and trend the volume, depth and frequency of retail newspaper print advertising.
- Number of listings per promotion was on average: 137 (median = 99)
- Number of listings per promotional page was on average: 11.6 (median = 10)
- Number of overall pages per promotion was on average: 15.3 (median = 9 & mode = 9.5)
- Number of versions per promotion was on average: 17.3 (median = 3 & mode = 1)
- By converting a decent chunk of non-versioned content (e.g., catalogs), this is why the mode is 1
- Number of promotions per year per retailer was on average: 88.5 (median = 49 & mode = 9)
- By processing some catalogs, this is why the mode was 9 as some retailers that use catalogs only put out a few larger books per year
- Number of days that a promotion is live was on average: 30.3 (median = 9 & mode = 7)
- For most typical Sunday newspaper type circulars, the typical sale spans 7 days – Sunday thru Saturday
- English language promotions make up about 93%, Spanish contributes 6% and French contributes 2%
- Circular type promotions make up 84% of the overall ad volume and the rest is split between catalogs (7%), guides (1%) mailers (1%), ROP ads (1%) and other (6%)
I’m looking forward on doing some more analysis with the awesome heavy lifting that our in-house analytics team provides to help trend these stats against historical data going back to 1999 so as to gauge the level of print promotion decline that seems to be discussed frequently in the media lately. My hypothesis is that the decline will be very minimal at best and limited to certain retail industry segments.
Posted on 31 August 2009 by Loch Rose
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ShopLocal continues to track the in-store deals offered by many top retailers, and our data shows unusual levels of activity. Consumer sentiment remains cautious but improving, so the retailers are working hard to offer them exceptional value, with the weighted average number of offers up 16% year-over-year in recent months.
After the post-holiday sales ended, deals returned to normal levels in March and April, but picked up significantly in late spring and summer. The retailers have given their customers some great deals heading into the important Back to School season, the question now is whether the customers have responded.
Posted on 23 December 2008 by Loch Rose
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The number of retailer offers returned to normal seasonal levels in early December, but the latest updates show that was just a pause in the retailers’ promotional campaigns:
- The offer counts in the week of December 14-20 were unprecedented for mid-December, up 13% from 2007
- Then the offer counts dropped abruptly on December 21, just as the tardiest shoppers will be heading for the stores
What does this mean? The retailers kept the incentives strong for longer than usual this year, both because of the shorter Thanksgiving-to-Christmas shopping season compared both 2006 and 2007, and because shoppers are more price-conscious. Then, as normal, they cut back on the Sunday before Christmas Day, which this year fell relatively early, on December 21st. The outcome is that offer counts have dropped significantly and are already running at nearly post-Christmas levels, during the week when an unusually large number of procrastinating shoppers should be heading for the stores. In fact, as of December 19th, shoppers said that they had more than 35% of their shopping left to do. If shoppers follow through on their plans, retailers will have the opportunity to make up some ground in a tough holiday season, capturing shoppers’ last-minute purchases without needing to offer as many deals.
Looking a little deeper, it turns out that the major cut-backs in offers were made by Department Stores and Mass Merchants, with smaller drops in Food & Drug and in Consumer Electronics:
The drop in Department Stores and Mass Merchants is significant compared to 2006 and 2007:
Retailers are once again showing savvy merchandising as they head into the last days of the holiday season. If shoppers’ buying plans stay on track, the retailers could finish out the season as strongly as they began it on Black Friday, exceeding most analysts’ relatively modest expectations.
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