The ShopLocal Retail Index was up 37 percent for the month of October compared to the same period last year. The Index registered at 290 (benchmarked at 100 for January 2006), the second highest reading ever for a non-holiday month.
As the run-up to the holidays begins, consumers remain wary, with lower spending plans for 2009 than 2008. They plan to save money via online comparison shopping (70%, compared to 38% last year), and by starting their holiday shopping in October (22%) or even earlier (another 30%). Savvy retailers took advantage of these trends by offering more deals than ever in October – ShopLocal’s data showed a 16% increase in offers per retailer in October 2009 compared to October 2008 – and showcasing them in their online and print circulars.
October 2009 ShopLocal Index highlights include:
- The ShopLocal Index is up 37 percent in October year-over-year, with 382 million page views (adjusted), versus 295 million last year.
- The Other (Specialty) segment led the way with 79 percent growth, followed by the Home & Garden segment with 53 percent growth. The remaining segments all showed 20-30 percent growth.
- Consumer page views per visit on a per retailer basis averaged 13.1 for the month of October, up 5% from a year ago.
The ShopLocal Index is the advertising industry’s first market indicator designed to track the influence of the Internet on in-store shopping. Updated monthly, the Index is based on the online activity of more than 25 million monthly consumer visits to in-store local promotions that are presented on the sites of more than 50 major U.S. retailers, including JCPenney, Target, Best Buy, Walgreens and Home Depot. These retailers cover all major retail segments including computers, consumer electronics, office supplies, home improvement, department stores, mass merchants, grocery, drug and various specialty stores. The retailers’ online circular sites are powered by ShopLocal’s SmartCircular technology.
Within a limited number of Canadian Tire physical stores, a test is now underway to see how in store shoppers react and use a new touch screen Fujitsu kiosk that enables them to browse the weekly flyer (ShopLocal powered of course) among a product locator, price verifier and browsing the CanadianTire.com site.
It’s exciting to see high engagement technologies creep back into the physical retailer world. There is a real un-tapped value proposition that retailers need to capitalize on of blurring the lines between the different channels.
Canadian Tire has done a great job of creating a strong visual identify around these kiosks which are called iShop by wrapping the rather boring looking, underlying kiosk in a "skin" of sorts that definitely is more inviting to shoppers.
Here is the "un-wrapped" (or non-branded) Fujitsu made touch screen kiosk that is internet enabled that is being deployed into two (2) Canadian Tire stores on a limited test basis.
The book sellers (Borders and Barnes & Noble) for example has been doing exactly this for a number of years by allows in store shoppers to break free from the limitations of the books available for sale in the physical store to the countless millions more available within the online store by utilizing kiosks. This just makes so much sense, and prevents a shopper whom didn’t see the book in store from going home an ordering it on Amazon.com.
The Canadian Tire use of the flyer (that is what Canadian’s call circulars or inserts) within these Fujitsu kiosks is very similar to the problem that Ecast is also trying to solve. In that, wayfinding (i.e., digital in store maps) combined with engaging “what’s on sale right now” content is a great way to help create motivation for a shopper to visit areas of a store that they may not typically travel to. It also aides in new product discovery as the currently on sale products can be highlighted and showcased. In addition, it is expected to decrease the number of abandoned baskets and increase customer satisfaction as shoppers can now get the answer to their #1 most asked question of, “Where can I find product X?”
Simplification of the overall SmartCircular Adobe Flash/Flex based interface was a key theme in this project here at ShopLocal, in that:
- Super-large navigation visuals were employed
- Only one circular page turning mode was used
- No shopper inputs (of for example a postal code) are required
- No category, brand, keyword search, shopping list, store details or 25 other different views are offered. Just simple circular / flyer ad page viewing and turning
Integration was the other theme which allowed:
- Tying into an interactive store maps and in store inventory called iPAL (made by TreoSystems) that creates a seamless product locator action by simply clicking on any of the items within the flyer
- For the store’s postal code to be passed into the weekly flyer application so as to take away a dumb user input from occurring
This is the main flyer view that offers a single page by page, animated page turning mode to browsing the Canadian Tire on sale items. All of this flyer content is of course locally geo-targeted to the specific store location of where the kiosk is located.
From within the interactive flyer, a simple help layer can be accessed at any point to aide any customers that need additional instructions on how to navigate the kiosk version of the Canadian Tire SmartCircular site.
By clicking on any product that is contained within the interactive flyer, the user is taken to an visual map of where that specific item
Ran across a fairly recent NAA study (performed by Scarborough Research in 2008 and MORI Research in 2009) and given all the not so great news that came out this week around newspaper circulation, thought a counter point of view would be worth while to explore.
Overall newspaper inserts are still being used by those that have access to them.
- 75% of all U.S. adults read a newspaper in print or online in the past week; over 170 million adults. For shoppers, newspaper advertising is an opt-in medium in an opt-out world.
- 59% of adults rank newspapers first as the media used to help plan shopping or make purchasing decisions in the past 7 days.
- 80% of newspaper readers report looking at advertising when reading the paper.
- 41% say newspapers are the medium used most to check out ads, more than all electronic media combined. (TV, radio, Internet)
- 77% of newspaper readers took an action as a result of a print newspaper ad in the past 30 days. 59% clipped a coupon, 52% bought something advertised and 45% visited a store.
- 60% of newspaper readers followed up a newspaper ad online in some way. 44% went to a website after seeing a print newspaper ad and 28% conducted an online search after seeing a newspaper ad.
- 82% of readers used a preprinted insert in the past 30 days.
- 59% used to compare prices, 55% used to compare one circular to another, 52% saved until visiting the store and 43% used to make an unplanned purchase.
- 4.4 days is the average time frame that an adults keep an inserts.
The ShopLocal Retail Index was up 29 percent for the month of September compared to the same period last year. The Index registered at 242 (benchmarked at 100 for January 2006).
With a background of positive news on inflation and consumer sentiment, consumers are starting to show some willingness to open their purse strings. Retail sales growth in September reflected this, showing a year-over-year increase for the first time in 13 months. But with real income dropping, consumers continue to search for bargains: over 25% of consumers now say that they only buy clothing on sale, up more than 5 points from a year ago. With Internet usage continuing to grow, consumers are increasingly heading to the online circulars to find the sales that they value so highly.
September 2009 ShopLocal Index highlights include:
- The ShopLocal Index is up 29 percent in September year-over-year, with 316 million page views (adjusted), versus 261 million last year.
- The Home & Garden segment led the way with 54 percent growth, followed by the Department Stores and Mass Merchant segment with 45 percent growth. Most other segments showed 20-30 percent growth.
- The Consumer Electronics, Computers and Office Supplies segment showed the least growth, up 11 percent from a year ago.
- Consumer page views per visit on a per retailer basis averaged 12.1 for the month of September, down 1% from a year ago.
The ShopLocal Index is the advertising industry’s first market indicator designed to track the influence of the Internet on in-store shopping. Updated monthly, the Index is based on the online activity of more than 25 million monthly consumer visits to in-store local promotions that are presented on the sites of more than 50 major U.S. retailers, including JCPenney, Target, Best Buy, Walgreens and Home Depot. These retailers cover all major retail segments including computers, consumer electronics, office supplies, home improvement, department stores, mass merchants, grocery, drug and various specialty stores. The retailers’ online circular sites are powered by ShopLocal’s SmartCircular technology.
Masha Sajdeh of Arc Worldwide presented a great piece of brand new multichannel research at the In-Store Marketing Expo that took place here in Chicago last week. This studies methodology and sample was a solid:
- 3 countries
- 5,609 respondents
- 60 minute online survey
- 20 categories of products examined
- 10 unique channels probed
The entire Arc multichannel study is worth a careful read, but due to it’s length (57 pages) we’ll only examine a few portions that pertain to better understand which channel different types of multichannel shoppers are using and why.
For those not familuar with the concept of what multichannel shopping is all about, this is a great visual explanation.
So first let’s examine a few of the insights uncovered around how much time different multichannel shoppers spend per channel on a monthly basis. Surprisingly, the circular is the channel that showed the highest usage across all of the different types of mutlichannel shoppers (excluding a retailer’s own web site and store).
Note how the circular across all types of multichannel shoppers plays a critical role in adding the shopping process.
If we take a closer look at just the medium and heavy mutlichannel shoppers, the picture becomes even more stark. A retailer’s own web site and physical store are used heavily and fairly equally by both types. However the usage pattern around circulars is very different with heavy multichannel shoppers (arguable the most desirable and profitable type of shopper) using the circulars 95% of the time, which is higher than the retailer’s own web site. Even the more moderate mutlichannel shoppers are using the circulars at pretty hefty rates of 61%, which when again compared to a retailer’s own web site usage of 69% clearly demonstrates the continued importance of the circular to multichannel shoppers.
Wow, circulars are nearly as used by heavy multichannel shoppers as a retailers own physical stores!
Finally let’s try to get to the bottom of the ‘why’ – in this case, the ‘why’ is what causes these multichannel shoppers to use which channel when. Not surprising, circulars are all about saving money. Catalogs on the other hand are all about providing shoppers with inspiration.
Every single channel has a unique use and value proposition to a multichannel shopper.
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