Holiday Shopping Insights & Predictions

Holiday Shopping Consumer Behavior Review

Holiday 2014

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Peak Shopping Days

What’s Trending in 2014: Insights Gleaned from 2012-2013

• Cyber Monday remains the top online shopping day; however, in 2013, Thanksgiving Day affiliate sales cannibalized Black Friday sales for the first time. We can attribute this to earlier store openings, which means Black Friday deals need to be released earlier.

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• Search sales on Cyber Monday outpaced Thanksgiving and Black Friday combined. Cyber Monday also dominated display sales, with beauty brands seeing the biggest jump from Black Friday sales to Cyber Monday sales.

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• Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday have also become top shopping days across the U.K., Canada, and Australia.

• Cyber Monday trumps Black Friday in the U.K. network, an opposite trend from the other regions.

• Note the importance of Boxing Day – a U.K., Canadian and Australian bank holiday that generally takes place on December 26th. It has quickly become a top online shopping day internationally.

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• While in-store holiday traffic is starting earlier and earlier each year, online sales don’t peak until noon on Black Friday, followed by a steady decline throughout the day.

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• Cyber Monday sees a different trend. Activity increases throughout the day, with a small peak at lunchtime, and a larger peak in the evening. This is likely due to the fact that Cyber Monday falls on a workday.

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Behavior of Purchase-Ready Consumers

• Site purchases soar during the holiday season, with an average increase of 80% across all verticals.

• This is particularly high among beauty brands (152%) and department stores (136%).

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• With the influx of promotions and purchases during the holidays, it’s no surprise that Average Order Value (AOV) decreases an average of 3% across all verticals.

• The exception is the travel vertical, which may see an increase of people buying “trips for two” as gifts, rather than purchasing individual tickets.

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• The average time-to-conversion rate decreases 24% by November. This is marked by a decrease in the number of engagements that precede a conversion.

Click-through-rates also drop in the days leading up to Thanksgiving Day; the gap between a click and sale practically disappear.

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Mobile Shopping Growth

• According to IBM, nearly a quarter of all online sales during the long Thanksgiving weekend came from mobile devices in 2013.

• Rakuten Marketing saw shoppers turn to personal devices for everything from researching products to redeeming coupons, and shopping online.

• Affiliate campaigns saw record breaking mobile sales in 2013 (for both smartphone and tablet), with 17% of sales coming from mobile devices during those days.

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Mobile share-of-purchase grew 22%, and tablet share-of-purchase grew 25% in November and December of 2013.

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• Mobile and tablet accounted for a substantial share of the purchases made on Black Friday in 2013, making up 33% of purchases each day. Mobile and tablet purchases on Cyber Monday were above the typical non-Holiday rate of 21% but trailed Black Friday.

• There is a divide growing, however, between tablets and smartphones: – Tablets have a much higher conversion rate at 6.4%, indicating that consumers prefer

to do their holiday shopping via tablet versus smartphone.– Smartphones, conversely, are not converting as efficiently. While smartphones

accounted for nearly a quarter of traffic at 23%, conversion rates of 1.5% were much lower than tablets and PCs.

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Conclusion: What Does This All Mean?

• The holiday season has grown by one day; consumers are shopping an entire day earlier than previous years, a trend we expect will continue in 2014.

• Consumers are not waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals, more and more consumers are looking for value online, and will buy whenever they find it.

• Consumers are turning to their mobile devices for researching products and redeeming coupons. Mobile will continue to thrive this holiday season as more consumers adopt tablets and smartphones for online shopping.

• Advertisers need to maximize holiday opportunity by extending peak-day strategies throughout the holiday shopping season and by optimizing the smartphone shopping experience.

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Holiday Shopping Starts Earlier

2014 Holiday Predictions

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“We’ll see an increase in smartphone purchases due to higher adoption of larger screens. Through cross-channel and cross-device attribution, we’ll also find that consumers are using online shopping tools more aggressively than they have in years past, including shopping apps. This will also fuel a record rate of webrooming and showrooming during the 2014 holiday shopping season, as savvy shoppers search the Internet for shopping promotions.” 

- Tony Zito, Global President, Rakuten Marketing 

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“The in-store experience will become more important again, despite past predictions from doomsayers about ‘the death of the mall’. With year-over-year increases in mobile purchases, and the growing adoption of showrooming, the lines between in-store and online shopping are blurring. More than ever, advertisers will need to blend strategies to maintain consistency between in-store and offline marketing. This season will also elevate online-to-offline attribution as a more standard part of marketing programs, given its value in maximizing the return on investment across offline and digital marketing efforts.” 

-Danny Kourianous, SVP, Product Development, Rakuten Marketing

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“Retailers have been very surgical in analyzing the data from 2012 and 2013’s holiday cycles.  As a result, they will continue to push for full price sales – saving the big deals for Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. This is a departure from previous Black Fridays, where deals were simply released early. Expect unique deals on each of the key days -Thanksgiving Day will see its own unique promotions this year for example.” 

- Melissa Feemster, General Manager, SVP at Rakuten Affiliate Network

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“As advertisers launch holiday shopping promotions earlier and earlier each year, we will begin to see an affect on peak shopping days. While we may see Thanksgiving Day sales outpace Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we will also begin to see a trend that makes peak shopping days less significant as shoppers are increasingly seeking out deals throughout all of November and December.” 

-Bridget Fletcher, Senior Director, Marketing, Rakuten Display