More than one-third (36%) of consumers plan to do more holiday shopping online this year with 42% planning to use ‘buy online, pick up in-store’ or curbside options, according to a recent survey by leading provider of cloud-based e-commerce solutions, ChannelAdvisor.
Close to half (49%) of survey respondents in Australia expect to shop online in the future more than they did pre-pandemic with 33% predicting they will shop for groceries online in the future more often than before Covid-19.
The survey also found that 37% of participants have bought items online that they hadn’t purchased pre-pandemic, and more than half (55%) are shopping online more frequently.
Price is the biggest influence on online buying decisions (79%), ahead of availability (55%), reviews (44%), delivery speed (42%) and brand name (35%).
When survey respondents go online to buy products, most start their product search on a search engine (37%), followed by marketplaces or retail sites (35%), brand website (23%) and social media (6%).
Out of stock is the leading reason for abandoning online purchases (61%), ahead of ‘price could be better elsewhere or become lower in the future’ (46%), negative reviews (35%), unclear product information (32%) and unclear product images (26%).
The survey results are clear – consumers aren’t buying products and interacting with companies the way they did before 2020, according to ChannelAdvisor chief marketing officer, Mike Shapaker said.
“Consumers want convenience at each stage of the buying journey — from research to sale. Brands and retailers need to shift their focus to their consumers’ demands. Ahead of peak season, they’ll need to reimagine and reinforce e-commerce strategies to take advantage of these permanent changes, as their competitors will soon begin doing the same,” he said.
The ChannelAdvisor consumer survey gauged the shopping behaviours of over 1,000 respondents in Australia aged from 18 to 65+ years old. The results were fielded by Dynata.