Do your internal sales and executive strategy sessions begin with these questions:
- Where are our customers to be found?
- What technologies are our customers using?
- How are our customers' path-to-purchase journeys' changing?
- Are we meeting our customers along their path-to-purchase journeys and supporting them?
- Are we digitally transforming at a pace that will keep us aligned with our customers' pace of change?
- Is our IT budget aligned with the required pace of change?
- Are we re-engineering business processes to align with required digital transformations and mobile consumer behaviors?
The point has been made. We all recognize there is a lot of money to be made catering to online shoppers. The problem is - just when many companies thought they had their e-commerce capabilities and strategies under control, consumer behaviors change. How? They jumped to mobile devices in the form of smartphones and tablets for much of the path-to-purchase journey. In fact, in our analysis over three-quarters of path-to-purchase journeys are already completed before vendors are contacted, and much of it was completed using mobile devices. If a retailer waits to be contacted before attempting to influence, they have missed the boat. If marketing campaigns are desktop/laptop centric, they have missed key opportunities and demographics to influence. If customers don't contact vendors until late in the path-to-purchase journey, then how can retailers effectively influence buying decisions? They need to understand consumer behaviors in general, and mobile consumer behaviors in particular.
In a recent survey I conducted of 108 business and IT professionals, all purchased products and services online. Of those, eighty-nine percent purchase products and services online using mobile devices (smartphones and/or tablets). However, when asked what means they typically use for online purchases, thirty-nine percent answered desktops/tablets, twelve percent mobile devices, and forty-eight percent answered both desktop/laptop and mobile devices regularly. This data highlights the fact that many mobile consumers still wait to purchase products online using desktops/laptops even if they researched the products on smartphones and tablets. The use of multiple devices and computers in the path-to-purchase process highlights the need to support customers across all channels to ensure they have a beautiful and consistent customer experience. This is not easy as there are a lot of moving parts and technologies involved.
To add to the complexity retailers face, different parts of the path-to-purchase journey are favored on different devices. Yikes! On-the-go searches and quick information discoveries are favored for smartphones. Just search for a product or service and save the link. In-depth research and rich product comparisons are often done on tablets with bigger screens. For online purchases, consumers still overwhelmingly use desktops/laptops as they are assumed to be more secure. Understood? Don't, however, forget that many consumers still only use desktop/laptops and their behavior is different. In fact, Cognizant just completed its 2015 Shoppers Survey of 5,000 people and forty-three percent typically only use computers for online shopping activities.
- Daily 1.8%
- Weekly 28.7%
- Monthly 43.5%
- Quarterly 19.4%
- Yearly 5.5%
- Early morning
- Mid morning
- Early afternoon
What location are mobile consumers at when they shop online? That depends on what stage in the path-to-purchase they are in. Here are the most popular locations for mobile consumer shopping from my recent survey ranked in order of popularity:
- Home - living room
- Work - desk
- Home - bedroom
- Home - TV room
- Coffee Shop/Restaurant
- Commuting - automobile/taxi/train/airplane/subway
I will stop here for today. I am writing a lengthy report now on all the details of these studies. If you would like to review these findings in detail and arrange a briefing, please contact me. The bottom line is that consumers' path-to-purchase has been significantly impacted by mobile devices and if retailers and etailers are not in step with these changes, they will lose to competitors that are.
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Kevin Benedict
Writer, Speaker, Senior Analyst
Digital Transformation, EBA, Center for the Future of Work
Cognizant
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***Full Disclosure: These are my personal opinions. No company is silly enough to claim them. I am a mobility and digital transformation analyst, consultant and writer. I work with and have worked with many of the companies mentioned in my articles.
