• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer, October 10, 2014

It’s October and Christmas is right around the corner, according to marketers at least. And while e-commerce is growing by leaps and bounds, new surveys show that social media still plays a relatively small role in holiday shopping -- although this role is growing at a slow, steady rate.

Accenture surveyed 500 U.S. consumers and found that e-commerce and mobile devices are definitely on the upswing when it comes to gift shopping. Overall 63% of respondents said they plan to use a laptop or home computer to make purchases or research products; that’s an increase of 16% over last year. Furthermore 24% plan to use a smartphone, up 6% from last year. Overall 71% plan to participate in “webrooming,” that is, browsing online and then going into a store to make their purchase. No surprise, mobile devices will also play a role in in-store shopping: 36% of respondents said they would use a mobile phone, smartphone, or tablet to compare prices while browsing retail.

However the digital craze doesn’t seem to extend to social media, as just 13% of respondents said they plan to use social network sites to make purchases or otherwise assist them in their shopping; that’s a modest 2% increase from 11% in 2013 and 8% in 2012.

Accenture retail practice global managing director Dave Richards noted: “With over one-third of survey respondents saying they would shop this holiday season using a mobile device in-store in order to compare prices, it is critical for retailers to make it seamless for consumers to trade on mobile applications by incorporating social media and mobile technologies into their stores and multichannel environments. It is more important than ever that retailers switch from a mass-marketing approach to promotions and embrace mobile and other digital tools to deliver more targeted one-to-one offers.”

Accenture’s data on social shopping behaviors seems to confirm some previous research suggesting that social media plays a relatively small role in online shopping decisions. Last year an IBM study found that while e-commerce sales rose on “Black Friday,” social sites contributed just 1% of total traffic to e-commerce sites on Black Friday as well as the week prior to it.