Roll up your sleeves, retailers.
Consumers are armed — with product research — and primed to shop. BazaarVoice, a platform that connects brands to shoppers has released insights in its “Holiday Headquarters” report that shares updated consumer behavior in light of the coming shopping season.
To secure the insights, BazaarVoice pulled data from its network, which includes more than 5,000 brand and retail websites. Page view traffic of seven different categories was reviewed to uncover updated nuances of shopping activity. To discern top trending products, BazaarVoice mined page view data across its network. “For the path to purchase information, transaction data of these categories during the holiday season was compared to non-holiday time periods to show the increase in conversion during the holidays,” a BazaarVoice spokesman said.
According to the report, customers have readied themselves for the coming holiday season. BazaarVoice found that Black Friday and Cyber Monday boasts two-and-a-half times the traffic of a normal shopping day — handbags, shoes, and apparel present the highest opportunities, it discovered.
Handbag purchases were highly deliberated, the research found. “The average handbag buyer spent five days researching nine products with one product revisit across three session,” the report said. The top trending accessories for pre-holiday 2017 were the Coach “Turnlock Edie” shoulder bag, Kate Spade’s “Cameron Street Jensen,” Vera Bradley’s “On the Go” cross-body bag, Kipling’s nylon front pocket satchel, and Michael Kors’ “Mercer” large leather tote.
Retailers and brands are increasingly held accountable for not only product quality, but also its entire shopping journey. BazaarVoice found that 58 percent of shoppers read reviews before purchases. This shouldn’t be strictly considered for online spending, either. “For every incremental one dollar sold online, an additional $2.21 is sold in-store as a result of reading a review,” the report said.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday doesn’t strictly reserve all shopping, the research also identified micro moments that can move the needle in revenue, too. The report suggested increasing sales throughout the year to continuously attract deal-hungry shoppers.
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