A set of holiday shopping predictions released today by Adobe suggests that a large proportion of customers may make purchase decisions based on brand loyalty rather than bargains, discounts and special offers.
The Adobe Digital Insights (ADI) report also predicts a longer holiday shopping season, increasing from 31 to 53 consecutive days this year, and an impressive 11 percent growth in online sales, reaching a record value of $91.6 billion. The predictions are based on data aggregated by the Adobe Marketing Cloud, including over one trillion visits to retail websites and 55 million product SKUs,
Other insights include:
- Mobile will drive 53 percent of traffic to retail websites, but contribute only 34 percent of online sales, signalling that conversion continues to be a challenge on mobile
- Cyber Monday will break records as the largest online shopping day ever
- Thanksgiving sales will not repeat the previous year’s growth
I asked Becky Tasker, Managing Analyst at ADI, if there was anything unexpected in the report’s findings. She highlighted customer loyalty: “Twenty-five percent of customers will purchase at a higher price [from a trusted brand],” she said. “Not everyone is looking for the best bargains. This ties back to customer experience, reliability, quality and convenience.” In other words, it tends to confirm the growing belief that customers value their ongoing relationship with brands, and the customer experience (CX), can be more important than price.
She also noted that there’s a difference between where the best deals can actually be found, and where customers expect to find them—again suggesting customer journeys are driven by factors other than bargain-hunting.
There does remain a fear, she also said, that large-scale DDoS-type attacks, like the one which severely affected Internet service last week, might “taper” the expected growth.
