Capturing a 360-degree view of multi-channel shoppers
Consumers have more online as well as offline shopping channels and points of interaction with retailers than ever before, but retailers need to learn how to better understand consumer shopping preferences to benefit from the higher value of multi-channel shoppers, Venky Shankar, marketing professor at Texas A&M University, says.
“We need to be thinking in terms of integrated multi-channel marketing,” Shankar said during a general session titled “What E-Retailers Must Know About How Shoppers Use Their Sites,” at last week’s Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibition in San Jose, CA.
Shankar also advised retailers to look at their customers’ shopping behavior outside of the retailers’ own shopping environment—such as through surveys or consumer panels—to get a comprehensive look at customer interests.” If you don’t do that, you may never learn what your customers are thinking,” he said. “Look for metrics that capture a 360-degree view of your customers.”
For example, he said, 70% of consumers in the 15-34 age group are active on social networking sites like Facebook.com, YouTube.com and MySpace.com, where they’re likely to come across consumer-generated content about retail brands. A large number of participants in social networks use them to learn about retail brands and have had products recommended by other participants, Shankar added.
But such exposure in social networking and other online venues affects how consumers shop in stores as well as online. Shankar noted that multi-channel shoppers spend hundreds of dollars more per year and shop more frequently than shoppers who routinely shop only a single channel.
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