Post pandemic shifts lead to a retail renaissance
The pandemic has accelerated a host of cultural and societal changes along with a transformative shift in consumer shopping behaviours.
With greater opportunity to flex our lives at work and at home, and the rise of digital retail, today’s shoppers are more fluid as they move between in-store and online to meet their needs. With hybrid shopping here to stay, there are new challenges to delivering convenience, relevance, security and a sense of social purpose. Here, we identify four key shopping trends of 2022.
Hybrid shopping deepens customer experiences
Online shopping has now firmly established itself as a channel for many Australians. However, a post-pandemic desire to ‘return to normal’ and some logistical frustrations with online purchases has meant that the power of physical stores to drive high conversion and increase average purchase values remains significant.
A recent Shopify study found that almost half of all Australian shoppers now use online searches and websites to discover new brands, and one in ten use social media. Yet, most Australians (77%) still view shopping as going into a physical store, with older Aussies three times more likely to have this view than younger generations.
Shopper’s EOFY Shopper Behaviour Study revealed 53% of consumers will research a product or service after seeing it advertised in-centre, with more than a third of shoppers visiting a physical store before purchasing technology, office equipment, furniture and homewares.
The ability to see, touch and handle products in person before buying remains important for higher-priced items and provides brands with an opportunity to deepen the experience for the customer. In addition, Australians are optimistic, have bounced back and enjoy visiting retail environments for social activities, meeting friends and experiencing goods and services in person.
In addition to convenience, residents of 20-minute neighbourhoods have a strong connection to their community, where they enjoy their local parks, support local businesses, and actively visit local shopping centres to connect with friends at cafes, restaurants, and food halls. Post-pandemic, neighbourhood shopping centres remain an important part of our every-day lives.
The rise of the conscious consumer
Globally, 90 per cent of consumers are more concerned about the environment and sustainability than ever before, with 50 per cent of Australian consumers willing to pay more for a product from a purpose-led business, according to a Commonwealth Bank Insights Report.[1] Consumers now expect brands to actively demonstrate meaningful action on social issues, such as reducing their carbon footprint, addressing inequality, and offering a wide variety of sustainable or inclusive products.
Some of the nation’s best-known organisations are now taking action to ensure Australia meets its carbon-reduction commitment. At Shopper, we are working towards becoming a carbon-neutral business in 2022 and will invest further to grow our commitment towards sustainability in years to come in order to meet growing community expectations of our partners and clients.
Harnessing smart advertising and data
Retail out-of-home (OOH) advertising is a key channel for communicating with shoppers. The increasing crosspollination of smart advertising and data is critical in driving the precision of creative campaigns and their relevancy to consumers. In a recent campaign, we were able to geographically target active and lapsed consumers of a particular product through our digital retail OOH network positioned in close proximity to supermarkets.
By partnering with Flybuys, we were able to use transactional data to identify which shopping centres were over- and under-indexing the purchase of the product. This enabled us to strategically assign the campaign to shopping centre locations based on the data and measure the campaign impact via sales uplift, number of items sold, average transactional value and new customer acquisition, compared to shopping centres that did not feature the campaign.
This campaign overdelivered on all the metrics, and we believe this collaborative approach of blending smart advertising and transactional data will fast become an industry mainstay. It delivers on effectiveness and direct measurement, and importantly improves the consumer’s shopping experience.
[1] https://insideretail.com.au/business/most-australians-still-see-shopping-as-in-store-not-online-shopify-202109
[2] Shopper End of Financial Year 2022 Study surveyed 2,516 Australians during May 2022.
[3] Bastion COVID-19 Research Report – Wave 27: data collection: 9-11 February 2022
[4] CommBank Consumer Insights Report (April 2022) https//www.commbank.com.au/articles/newsroom/2022/04/shoppers-prioritising-purpose.html
By Karissa Fletcher, Chief Marketing Officer, Shopper