If you’re anything like me, you’ll do almost anything to avoid the frenzy of Christmas shopping.

While it can be fun, if you have lots of time…. when you’re time poor it becomes more of a chore.

Enter online shopping!

The latest Newspoll survey reported by Inside Retail predicts that more than one third of us are going the easy option this Christmas – online shopping.

Australians are expected to spend over $2b this Christmas in shopping for their gifts online.

Gen Y will be the biggest users of online shopping, with over half those aged 18 to 34 intending to do their Christmas shopping online.

However, the Boomers are also taking it up in a big way. Over a third of this age group (50 to 64) have stated their intention to avoid the Christmas shopping melee this year and use online.

Another interesting stat from the survey – over half of Australians with children expect to shop for Christmas presents online (understandable too – much easier than shopping with kids in tow as we all know!). In contrast, a little over a quarter of Aussies without kids intend to shop online this Christmas.

So knowing many of us are eager to shop online this Christmas, it has been disappointing to see what has just happened with Click Frenzy. While it’s been called a ‘fail’, the idea itself has huge traction. It was the execution and the offer (or lack thereof) that ‘failed’. The site was not set up to handle the volume and the offers or incentives to buy were not as strong as product and pricing available in the online global marketplace.

Interesting to note that David Jones held an online (and in-store) sale separate to Click Frenzy and reported record sales for the day. Just goes to show that consumers want to spend, they just need little more motivation.

Well, I’m off to put my first online orders in for Christmas presents. How will you be shopping this year?

Recently I read, with some concern, a widely discussed study of customer service amongst ten of Australian leading retailers.

The study drew very strong conclusions about service delivery amongst these retailers on the basis of four (yes four) ‘mystery’ shops conducted amongst a handful of Sydney based stores. Is this a meaningful and representative measure of service delivery within these stores that have millions of customer transactions every week?

Shouldn’t it be based on hundreds (or thousands) of ‘actual’ customers across their store network?

In Australia mystery shopping has become the most widely used measurement of customer service delivery amongst retailers, but with the customer service challenges presented by new market entrants and new customer channels should we re-think the way we measure service delivery?

Mystery shopping is certainly a valuable tool to measure compliance with operational standards, but a single store check conducted by a trained mystery shopper will never measure ‘surprise and delight’, those moments of truth that actually drives greater customer visitation, spend, and positive word of mouth.

And impacting spend is maybe not as hard as you think. I’ve attended many recent retail conferences where I’ve seen innovative in-store design, theatre and technology, but a lot can be said for delivering good old fashioned customer care. But you need to measure it at a store level.

Dave Griffin is a shopper and retail specialist at Latitude Insights. He can be contacted on: (03) 9571 1199. Latitude Insights were recently awarded Target’s supplier of the year 2012 in the professional services category.

Ever dreamed of having a virtual supermarket shopping experience from the comfort of your own home? No, neither have I…but UK retailer Tesco seems to think this may be the way of the future.

Tesco is working towards a three-dimensional virtual store that shoppers can walk through and buy from using a smart TV. Shoppers would move about the virtual store using motion sensor controls to turn and progress down aisles, and could purchase products by reaching out and touching them on the virtual shelves.

Software developers Keytree have built a demo store for Xbox Kinect that shows a little of what the virtual shopping experience might be like. See the video below:

There’s no doubt this is an innovative idea, but I struggle to see many valuable benefits from this method of shopping. The experience is expected to merge the best of online and offline shopping. The implication is that online shopping lacks the rich immersive experience – which the virtual store can now deliver.

While the 3D virtual store may feel more familiar to a real shopping experience, there is none of the hustle and bustle of a real supermarket, there’s no chance of bumping into friends from the area, and quite tragically, there’s no opportunity to steal a sneaky grape! So it really is very far from a realistic shopping experience. Plus, if you’re truly missing the full ‘shopping experience’ – you could always get up off the couch and go to the supermarket – the old fashioned way!

However, there is at least one foreseeable benefit to virtual shopping; it looks like fun! If you look at the video above, you’ll see that you select a product using a target – much like the way you select your unsuspecting victim in a game of Golden Eye! (Well, that’s what comes to mind for me!) Who doesn’t love a good game? And with all the talk about gamification at the moment, there’s every chance that Tesco will incorporate further gamification elements into the virtual shopping experience – now that could give it an edge! You heard it here first!

I’m sure many will want to try virtual shopping purely for the novelty factor, but I don’t think bricks and mortar supermarkets need to worry about closing their doors just yet…

What do you think? Will virtual shopping take off?

It’s not often that I agree with Gerry Harvey, chairman of retailer Harvey Norman, but this time I think he has got a fair case. In a recent study, Choice magazine used ‘shadow shoppers’ to gauge customer service across 10 of Australia’s largest and most well known retailers. Harvey Norman (along with a number of the other stores) performed rather poorly. The issue that Gerry has is that these findings were based on just four individual store visits. I can see his point.

With almost 200 stores across Australia, visiting a sample of only four stores in the Sydney area can hardly be described as statistically significant when it comes to reporting the data collected by Choice in this study. It’s like describing Van Gogh as a terrible painter based on seeing only one of his paintings. I’m sure like Gerry, there are some very unhappy store managers whose stores reputations have been tarnished by this very broad brush stroke.

While mystery shopping is an established tool used to gain a ‘true’ representation of an in store experience, it does have its limitations, especially for large retailers such as those focused on in the Choice study. To truly understand the store experience of an Australia wide retailer you have to visit a large number of stores, something that this study failed to do. Visiting a large number of stores takes a lot of time, effort and in the end money. Successfully adopting an Australia wide mystery shopper program is not an easy process. It’s a one way process that involves a lot of legwork. So why not turn the tables and let actual customers have their own say?

Thanks in part to social media becoming part of the fabric of our lives, we are increasingly able to have two way dialogue with companies. As customers we are wanting to have our say and retailers just need to be willing to listen.

An online customer experience program (CEP) which can recognise potentially every customer Australia wide is an extremely powerful tool, more so than a mystery shop which by its very nature is limited to only a few in store interactions.

Simply by providing an online customer feedback form on the base of a receipt, or on flyers / signage in store, a CEP provides a collection device than can gather the statistically significant thoughts and opinions of thousands of customers anywhere and at any time.

While Gerry believes that customer service is a fantastic across his stores, I’m sure that a CEP would be able to tell him exactly what his customers think.

Anyone with a brand would be asking this question – what is the ROI on a Facebook fan? Jon Bird from Inside Retail has managed to hunt down an article that gives some insight into this question – The true value of a brand fan.

Anyone in business knows that it’s often easier to retain the customers you have rather than ‘recruit’ new customers to your brand. Tough economic times such as those we are experiencing now, and the level of competition that can be seen to get the almighty consumer dollar, makes this scenario especially true.

With many brands now having Facebook pages for their fans, it is worth asking the question – What is the value of a Facebook fan?

Some interesting revelations emerged via the study Jon Bird came across – ‘The Value of a Facebook Fan: An Empirical Review’, by an organisation in the US called Syncapse

The study (undertaken about a year ago) looked at 20 of the top brands on Facebook in the US. Fans and non-fans were compared on six variables: product spending; loyalty; propensity to recommend; brand affinity; media value; and acquisition cost. The brands studied were skewed towards manufacturers, but did include Victoria’s Secret, Starbucks and McDonald’s. What became apparent was that fans are quantifiably more valuable to businesses across all variables:
• On average, fans spend an additional US$71.84 per year on products compared to those who are not fans (In the case of McDonald’s, fans reported spending US$159.79 more per year).
• Fans are 28 per cent more likely than non-fans to continue using the brand.
• Fans are 41 per cent more likely than non-fans to recommend a ‘liked’ brand to their friends.

So here’s the question for you, have you got your Facebook page set up?

The online tax push by Gerry Harvey (Harvey Norman), and other large Australian retailers such as Myer, David Jones, Target, House, Borders is receiving incredible (and ongoing) backlash from angry consumers. What the retailers are proposing, is for either the local GST to be scrapped on goods sold for less than $1000, or for a similar duty to be applied to goods bought from overseas online sites.

This tax push reveals two key points – the retailers’ lack of understanding of their customers, and their lack of understanding of the power of social media.

The ordinary people on the street (aka the customers) are flocking to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to express their anger and disgust over the retailers’ proposition. In fact, the retailers’ public push for this online tax appears to have opened a can of worms. While many people are now saying they will no longer buy from these stores (particularly Harvey Norman), it has also provided consumers the chance to air ALL their grievances to do with the big retailers.

Media reports that the retailers are stunned by the reaction from consumers, which is interesting as we all know shoppers love getting a ‘bargain’. And they love the convenience of shopping online. Combine the two and it’s a heady mix. Trying to take this away from them is like taking a lollipop from a child. It’s never going to end well.

Before the advent of social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc (that allow everyone a say) this proposed online tax would probably have gotten off the ground without a peep to be heard from disgruntled consumers.

However, social media has changed all this, as borne out by the reactions to this proposed campaign.

Following the public outcry, a recent media release from Gerry Harvey reveals he is stepping away from the campaign, saying it was ‘suicidal’ to have been involved. The backlash to him personally and his chain of franchises, Harvey Norman, has been too strong.

The irony in all this is that retailers source cheap goods and labour from overseas (and consumers are aware of this), but do not want consumers to be able to do the same.

A lesson in amongst this entire fracas is that companies need to create sustainable and mutually respectful relationships with their customers.

In the meantime, the retailers have alerted the public as a whole to the advantages of online shopping with overseas companies – wide range, big savings. Welcome to the 21st century!

The polls below tell the story.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald 7 Jan 2011