At-Distance Shopping on Rise, Finds Newgistics Easy Merchandise Returns Are Key
Wednesday, 26 July 2006
Busy summer schedules and rising fuel prices are impacting consumer behavior, positioning the home as the new hot destination for Summer 2006. A survey commissioned by Newgistics, Inc. and conducted by Harris Interactive shows that home shopping is on the rise this summer, with more than a quarter (27 percent) of US adults more likely to shop from home (online, catalog or TV) due to busy schedules and one in four adults (25 percent) more likely to shop from home due to rising gas prices.
An overwhelming number of home shoppers (96 percent) agree that the ability to return merchandise from home is a critical factor when deciding where to make a purchase. If a return process required consumers to travel to a mail center or drop box, only 13 percent of adults who shop from home would be very likely to shop with the retailer again.
In fact, given the option to return purchases directly from home with a pre-paid label, these adults are over four times as likely to shop with the retailer again as those who are restricted to a return process that requires travel to a mail center or drop box.(1)
"With 84 percent of adults stating that they are as busy or more busy this summer than they were last summer and 50 percent curtailing discretionary spending due to fuel prices, retailers need to accommodate consumers with increasingly hectic lives and a preference to stay close to home this summer," said Hillary Mendelsohn, author of thepurplebook: The Definitive Guide to Exceptional Online Shopping.
Customer Loyalty Begins at Home
According to the survey, consumers who are curtailing spending on non-essential items due to rising fuel prices are making trade-offs that put the home at the center of summer activities. Eighty-five percent are cooking at home instead of going out, 55 percent are renting movies instead of going to the movies and 25 percent are shopping from home instead of shopping at stores.
The survey revealed that retailers seeking to reach the growing number of home shoppers need to focus on convenience through the entire purchasing process. Those who shop from home cite numerous benefits including convenience (86 percent), the ability to shop any time of day or night (88 percent), cost savings (63 percent) and fewer concerns about privacy (59 percent). However, these adults also identify barriers that hinder home shopping, including the inability to touch or try on merchandise (79 percent) and costs associated with shipping fees (71 percent). Additionally, 55 percent of home shoppers identify inconvenient returns as a drawback to shopping from home.
Returns are a fact of life for the retail industry, but retailers that recognize returns as a critical customer touch point and cater to the preferences of the growing home shopping consumer base can transform returns into a key differentiator that boosts customer loyalty.
According to the survey, 76 percent of those who shop online, through catalogs or via the television, prefer to use a pre-paid US Postal Service Label as a return method when shopping from home. This preference rate drops by 25 percent when the merchandise return option requires a trip outside the home – forcing consumers to take the merchandise to a drop box or post office (50 percent). Providing shoppers with an easy, direct-from-home returns solution gives retailers the advantage they need to capture valuable consumer dollars this summer.
About the Survey
Harris Interactive(R) conducted the telephone survey on behalf of Newgistics, Inc. between July 7 and July 10, 2006 among a nationwide cross section of 1,122 US adults ages 18 and over. Figures for age, sex, race, and region were weighted where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire US adult population had been polled with complete accuracy.