In case you’re a retailer or shopper model, by now you’ve seemingly been prepping for this essential quarter for fairly some time. The 2024 version of our annual report, A Retailer’s Information To The 2024 Vacation Season, is right here that will help you navigate the approaching months throughout the end-of-year holidays.
To be taught from the final vacation season, we partnered with Bizrate Insights to look at when and the way US customers shopped for end-of-year holidays in 2023. And with insights from lots of our fellow Forrester analysts, we additionally present professional recommendation for you throughout advertising, buyer care, tech, and extra.
To begin, just a few knowledge factors concerning the 2023 vacation season (see our report for extra!):
- Thirty-eight % of US on-line adults started their 2023 vacation procuring in October or earlier (supply: Forrester).
- About one in 5 waited till December to begin procuring. Nonetheless, nearly three-quarters of on-line adults who shopped for the winter holidays continued procuring by December (supply: Bizrate Insights).
- About two in 5 US customers surveyed mentioned that they made a minimum of three-quarters of their 2023 vacation purchases on-line (supply: Bizrate Insights).
- Two-thirds of US on-line customers used a cell phone to buy on-line on Thanksgiving weekend in 2023 — primarily to make purchases, browse and analysis merchandise, test costs, and skim rankings and evaluations (supply: Bizrate Insights).
So how must you prep for the upcoming procuring season? Just some of the areas that our 2024 information delves into embrace why and methods to:
- Spend money on and sharpen your advertising techniques. Prepare for one more busy season, beginning proper now and together with Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday/Week. See what we noticed final yr when it comes to affords. Bear in mind to run promotions that clients really need — and learn to revamp your e-mail program to rise above the remaining. Questioning what to do about your loyalty program, social platforms, and your retail media proficiency? We’ve obtained you coated.
- Assist your busy clients with the value-add data they most want. Tune your commerce search and product discovery to offer clients good ideas, as they extra typically store for others and fewer so for themselves, and learn to step up your imagery, product evaluations, checkout, and funds experiences to easy their path — and your general consumer expertise to spice up their confidence.
- Put together your buyer care and affiliate groups to finest assist clients. You’ll have to handle to a broad spectrum of veteran and seasonal hires, so guarantee that all of them are equally effectively versed in any coverage modifications: what’s modified, the place it’s printed, and methods to clarify it to busy clients. Present your workforce details about merchandise, loyalty tiers, and anything that clients will count on them to grasp concerning the model.
There’s way more — please see our analysis right here. And be looking out within the coming weeks for much more shopper insights concerning the end-of-year procuring season, in addition to our annual US on-line vacation gross sales forecast.
In case you’re a Forrester shopper, please schedule a steerage session or inquiry with certainly one of us and/or our Forrester analyst colleagues for his or her space of experience.
