How Advanced Is the Shopper of Today?

One of the questions that frequently arises about the role of technology in the store is, “Who are we designing these experiences for?” And while this question is absolutely critical to designing great store experiences, it’s often answered flat-out wrong, leading to digital experiences launched with great fanfare and received by shoppers with, at best, a disinterested yawn.

Misunderstanding how technologically advanced shoppers have become over the past couple of years is one of the biggest mistakes a retailer can make. In part, there’s a generational tendency to think of anything we don’t individually embrace as less important than the skills we have mastered. Yet, while senior retail executives may pride themselves on decades of experience in merchandising or store operations and laugh at their inability to do more with a smartphone than check email, the younger generation that’s tweeting about a low price they found using a barcode-scanning app is more representative of the majority of shoppers.

In the past few years, shoppers have radically changed their relationship with technology, creating expectations for engagement, transparency and responsiveness that go far beyond what most retailers are providing. And many of the “next generation” experiences that retailers do create (“Sign up NOW to get SPECIAL DEALS texted to your phone!!!” or “Check out our FACEBOOK PAGE for the latest news!!!”) end up reinforcing the idea that the brand is out of touch rather than creating a stronger connection with the shopper.

So, how different is today’s shopper when it comes to how she embraces and uses technology? Here, we take a look at some of the data and statistics on how communication channels, expectations and shoppers’ habits have changed.

She multitasks

Today’s shopper doesn’t focus on one channel of influence at a time. In fact, a whopping 80 percent of consumers today will use a laptop or smartphone while watching TV. Disney has embraced this trend with “Second Screen” experiences, designed to run synchronized content on an iPad while watching a Disney movie on Blu-Ray disc. The idea that a shopper is either watching TV or surfing the Web is no longer true for the vast majority of consumers.

She’s connected

Today’s shopper is deluged with information. Dozens of emails and text messages per day, hundreds of channels of television and a nearly unlimited buffet of Web information all clamor for her attention. But she isn’t just listening to this flow of information; she’s creating it.

Each week, more than one billion tweets are sent out by Twitter users. And of these billion tweets, 20 percent are related to shopping, either requesting or providing information about product purchases. That’s a lot of traffic talking about what to buy. It also illustrates that, for the most part, today’s shopper isn’t asking retailers for this information, she’s asking her peers because …

She doesn’t trust you

Shoppers trust each other – not necessarily those selling products to them – and today’s technology gives them the power to engage directly with one another, even in the midst of the shopping experience. The number one driver for consumer electronics purchasers? Personal experience (58 percent), with word of mouth (51 percent) close behind. This means the ways retailers and brands touch shoppers – direct marketing (21 percent) and advertising (17 percent) – are far less impactful than the social tools shoppers are using to connect with one another.

Reviews and ratings by other shoppers are also more trusted than the information provided by product manufacturers. Seventy-five percent of consumers think companies don’t tell the truth about the products they advertise, while products with posted reviews have a 20 percent lower return rate than unreviewed products.

She expects more, cheaper and faster

The expectations for a perfect shopping experience are rising faster and faster. For example, shoppers in the U.K. are now willing to wait only two minutes in a checkout queue, down from five minutes just four years ago. Sixty-seven percent of them have walked away from a purchase because they weren’t willing to stand in line, and 51 percent won’t even go into a store if they see a long checkout queue.

Couple this with the fact that, every shopper today is a “value shopper,” concerned with (and knowledgeable about) how much things should cost, and the expectation for fast service, good prices and quality is higher than ever.

The Bottom Line

Today’s shopper is more demanding, informed and connected than ever before. And it’s not a bunch of early-adopter, gadget-freak young ’uns skewing the demographic statistics. Retailers and designers creating technology-enabled experiences need to remember that the bar is a lot higher to impress 30-year-old women shopping with smartphones than it is to impress a roundtable of jaded (and often older and less technologically sophisticated) retail executives.

In August, we’ll explore a technology that will impress even the most advanced mobile shopper: augmented reality, in which digital information is overlaid directly onto a view of the physical space. The shopper of tomorrow will expect these kinds of “magical” experiences, and retailers who don’t understand the demands of the shopper of today will be even further behind.

The Shelf Life of a Shopping App

In January, the 10 billionth app was downloaded from Apple’s App Store. This milestone was heralded throughout the mobile industry as proof that apps have become the dominant way consumers use their smartphones.

But behind that impressive statistic lurks a harsh reality – only 5 percent of those downloaded applications remained in use after 20 days.

However, shopping apps are proving to have staying power. In fact, 50 percent of shopping apps, to do things like keep track of lists, scan barcodes, deliver coupons, check prices, find products, etc., were still in use after 30 days.

With millions of shoppers using these apps, some of the basic rules of retailing will need to be rewritten. Take Black Friday, for instance, the most heavily advertised and promotion-centric day of retailing. In 2010, 64 percent of smartphone owners used a shopping app to compare prices. That makes the millions traditionally spent in advertising and discounts far less effective at influencing a shopper with instant access to all your competitors’ prices.

Jim Crawford is executive director of the Global Retail Executive Council (grec), an international association, and a principal at Taberna Retail, a global retail shopping experience consulting company. You can reach him at http://about.me/jimcrawford.