• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 5, 2002

According to the Jupiter Consumer Survey Report, Retail 2002: Redefining the Online Retail Consumer Research Highlights, no single investment will allow multichannel retailers to build comprehensive profiles of their customers’ multichannel shopping behavior. Instead of seeking this Holy Grail, retailers must settle for a combination of new and old tactics that will help provide broad guidance as to how their customers interact across channels.

Because more than 80 percent of online shoppers go online to shop with a very specific product in mind, the most effective merchandising opportunities will be cross-sell and upsell opportunities scattered on product pages and in the shopping cart, not product features concentrated in traditional merchandising focal points like the home page and category pages. Because this phenomenon widely expands the number of product placement decisions that merchandisers must make, they will have to diligently track and act upon a wide range of metrics, in addition to simple sales and profit measures.

Traditionally, analysis of shopping behavior online has focused on the behavioral dynamics of browsers (those who research but do not purchase online) and buyers (those who purchase online). Drawing upon data from the annual Jupiter Consumer Survey, conducted in March 2002, this report examines the segment of the online shopping population that purchases across channels of the same retailer.

Key Takeaways

- While 52 percent of the US online population (82 million consumers) has used the Internet both to purchase and to research purchases ultimately transacted off-line, only 10 percent (16 million consumers) have done so across channels of the same retailer.

- Active multichannel shoppers account for a disproportionately high share of Web-related purchasing volume overall. However, they are also a liability: This group is more deal-driven, is more aware of price in every channel, and consumes more in terms of costly site features such as live help.

- The relative influence of active multichannel shoppers will decline: The share of total Web-impacted revenues driven by this group will remain flat, while the share driven by the remainder of multichannel shoppers will grow from 56 percent to 64 percent by 2006.

- Just because a customer transacts across multiple channels of the same retailer does not mean that customer is any more loyal to the given retailer than are other buyers.

- Retailers should make customer segmentation the basis for allocating resources toward shoppers who purchase across the retailer’s channels. A spreadsheet containing a full summary of the forecast output is available on the Jupiter Web site accompanying the online version of this report.

Key Definitions

- Single-channel shoppers use the Internet to research purchases transacted off-line, but they do not purchase online.

- Multichannel shoppers use the Internet both to purchase and to research purchases transacted off-line.

- Active multichannel shoppers (or Actives) purchase across channels—including the Internet and the physical store or catalog—of the same retailer.

Jupiter, 2002