AIMIA Online Retail Event

The Online Retail Event “Brand Engagement in a Multi-Channel Environment” was held on September 7th in Sydney.

Victor Navarro, our Commercial Manager, was moderating the event, and he started proceedings by providing a brief overview of the recent study Outrider commissioned with Global Reviews focusing on user behavior with online retail purchases. The August 2011 study was a follow up to the 2009 study.

First off Victor introduced each speaker, with Justus Wilde, the Online Strategy Director for Amblique, Greg Muller the CEO for Global Reviews, Leanne Sheraton the GM – Marketing & Online for General Pants and Lucas McEntee the Managing Director for OHKI all presenting insights on online retail.

Australian Online Purchase Behaviour

Justus Wilde kicked off the presentations with some general statistics regarding online purchase behavior gained from his eCommerce consulting business.

He found that online customers had a 2-3 times higher transaction value than offline shoppers. In addition to this 80% of conversions came through on branded terms with the remaining 20% on non-branded generic terms. More than 60% of online purchases are made within the same day a customer begins the online research process.

Using these statistics to form the nucleus of his argument Justus then went on to assert how optimising your marketing strategy for single channels is not good practice, and how each product type and industry relies on each of these marketing channels in a different way.

Justus then went on to give an example of cross channel promotion by referring to a Facebook campaign that provides vouchers for customers that can be redeemed in store for discounts or access to special offers.

The takeaways from Justus’s presentation were;
• Leverage all channels in the marketing mix
• Understand the attribution and sales funnel
• Online drives offline
• Investing in CRM is critical to tracking the success of you multi-channel marketing efforts

Global Reviews Study – How Australia Shops Online

Greg from Global Reviews was up next, and his presentation was focused on the joint research conducted with Outrider in August 2011 to assess “How Australia shops online”

The study was designed to identify trends, new insights and the impact of social media on online shopping behavior.

The survey targeted 200 adults with a relatively even split between males and females across all age ranges. If anything it had slightly more older participants than young, which provides an interesting take on the report observations which I will discuss later.

In addition to the survey 100 respondents also completed an online task which monitored online purchase behavior for 3 products – jeans, a lounge suite and air conditioning units.

The key takeaways to come out of the study were;
• Reliance on the internet for retail purchases has increased substantially since 2009
• Reasons given were that online shopping is easier, more convenient and affordable compared to physical retail stores.

The top influencers to online purchase (in order):
• No shipping cost
• Security
• Easy to buy
• Confidence

One of the biggest trends to observe from the Global Reviews study is the importance of brand awareness, which has appeared to trump keyword relevancy in terms of importance for online shopping customers.

The main reasons an online shopper would stay with the first brand considered are;

• Existing customer
• Better price
• Shop location
• Good reputation
• Range of products

While brand recognition is a strong factor in users choosing a product based on brand the main reasons to move to another brand are;

• More relevant results using search engines
• Better price
• Better customer service
• Bad user experience

In terms of social media 45-52% of respondents said that social media does not influence their research process. A possible reason for this in the current study is the slightly older demographic researched – the results might be quite different if the demographic was on average younger. For example the study reported that over 90% of respondents spent less than $200 a month online which could be the result of an older, less web savvy demographic skewing the results.

Even though social media was described as having little influence on the final purchase decision by respondents Facebook emerged as a clear leader in all question categories.

Outrider will be providing a more in-depth analysis of the Global Review report in the coming weeks.

In summary the key factor Greg left us to consider are – how easy is it to buy from your business across channels?

Brand Authenticity

Next up was Leanne from General Pants. Her presentation was all about brand authenticity, and how it is important to maintain this in a buying climate where online is rapidly increasing in importance and thus taking staff out of the equation – where so much brand equity lies.

General Pants venture into online retail has led to a few important changes in brand engagement factors summarised here;

• Consumer expectations – always on (8pm to 12pm is busiest online time for sales)
• Instant response required
• Number of touch points and marketing outlets have exploded
• Consumers have been given a megaphone (eg social channels, YouTube)

Strategy to achieve authenticity:

• Touch points
• Exploring company voices (i.e. GP messaging, voice of designers/fashion experts, staff voices, brands, customers)
• Setting benchmarks for communication – does it inform? Connect? Entertain?
• Honesty in everything you do

New online retailer competing against big brands

The final presenter was Lucas, the MD for the new business venture OHKI. The biggest challenge Lucas faces running a relatively new business (14 months old) in the highly competitive sector of consumer electronics is establishing brand awareness, which this event has already highlighted as an extremely important factor in 2011 and onwards.

To answer this challenge Lucas identified 3 main hurdles most online businesses face, and set out to excel in each area.

• Content
• Fullfillment
• Traffic

Without established brand awareness OHKI puts the focus on excellent customer service and high quality products to compete with the larger brands.

To cap off what was a very successful and informative event Victor opened up the floor to QA to the panel.

Summary

The most important learnings I took away from the AIMIA event were;
• Brand recognition growing in importance
• Social Media not a major factor in purchase decision, but is growing
• Online retail provides a point of difference from bricks and mortar stores which is appealing to customers
• Consumer expectations change when they shop online
• Leveraging all channels is important in optimising your online retail store

Watch this space as we provide deeper analysis into the current state and future of online retail and how this can impact on your business.

Tags: aimia, online retail