New York—Free shipping was by far the most successful promotional offer among online marketers this past holiday season. But while 39% of shoppers said that free-shipping offers influenced their buying decisions, only 9% of shoppers actually received free shipping. Apparently the promise of free shipping was enough to persuade many consumers to shop on a Website.
That seeming contradiction was one of the findings discussed at the Jan. 15 opening session of the Shop.org 2003 Members’ Forum held here. Chuck Davis, president/CEO of comparison-shopping site BizRate.com, shared those findings before moderating a panel discussion of the holiday season just ended.
“A lot of you feed this” emphasis on free shipping, Davis said to the audience of multichannel marketers. “It was a frenzy.” Davis noted that among BizRate affiliates, the number of free shipping deals more than quintupled in the week after Thanksgiving.
“Free shipping is a good news/bad news story,” said panelist Steve Duchelle, director of e-commerce for consumer electronics retailer Circuit City. His company offered free shipping this past holiday season, and while it helped generate business and “warm fuzzies” among customers, it was expensive. What’s more, while normally 50% of Circuit City’s online purchases are shipped to the buyer and the remainder to a store for the customer to pick up himself, this past holiday season 70% were shipped directly to customers, putting a strain on the company’s fulfillment capabilities.
Among other online holiday shopping trends was consumers’ emphasis on finding deals. Fifty-four percent of the consumers surveyed by BizRate said they were more focused on finding deals this past holiday season than they had been the previous year.
As for shopping turn-offs, 42% said that late delivery of merchandise would preclude them from making a repeat purchase from a given vendor. And nearly 13% of those surveyed did indeed receive merchandise later than expected. Nearly one-third of consumers said that poor customer support would prevent them from returning to a particular marketer. Yet as Davis pointed out, customer service was one of the areas in which marketers try to cut costs.
In discussing what tactics worked best for the during the holidays, Bruce Prescott, senior vice president of direct marketing for apparel cataloger/retailer The Talbots, lauded targeted e-mail marketing for driving traffic to the stores as well as to the Talbots Website. He also said that the Website’s wardrobing functions, which help visitors pull together entire outfits, boosted sales as well.
And Robert Myers, vice president, content and merchandising for general merchant QVC.com, said that “customers were responding quite well to any merchandise that can be personalized,” from teddy bears to jewelry.