PlusOne – Marketing Musings

A survey in the USA by on-line customer-satisfaction consultancy ForeSee Results and market research firm FGI Research, found that:

that shoppers who use the Web as their primary research tool are more satisfied than those who go straight to brick-and-mortar stores. And those who research and buy on the Web are the most satisfied and loyal customers, and are the most likely to make additional purchases in the coming year. Additionally, nearly as many people are doing their shopping research on-line regardless of whether they’ll make their purchases on the Web or in stores. Some 38% of shoppers use the Web as their primary shopping research tool, compared with 41% who rely on stores for their research. In the electronics/computers and toys/books/games categories, on-line research plays an even greater role, with nearly half of shoppers doing their research on-line. Read article

The survey also showed that while satisfaction of purchasing experience in bricks-and-mortar stares was low, 86% of shoppers still preferred off-line purchasing. This was even among the the 38% who make on-line research – 71% of those still made their final purchase in a physical store.

So should we give up on making our products available for sale on-line? Not according to the survey, which identified that the most loyal customers were those that purchased on-line, meaning several things:

1. The cost of acquisition was lower
2. The profitability on future sales is much higher
3. The ease of marketing to them in the future is easier
4. There is also the ‘tell-friend’ aspect if you are savvy enough to provide incentives. (See our article from a week or so ago on this.)

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