New BIA/Kelsey Study Shows Online Dominates Shopping Habits

As the 2013 holiday shopping season gets underway, BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor (CCM) survey offers insights into how local shoppers in the U.S. are likely to find, engage and transact with local-serving businesses. Showcasing insights from the survey, our webinar on Nov. 6 previewed some of the insights on how consumers shop locally. If you are interested in seeing the slide deck used in that webinar click here.

According to our CCM survey 94% of consumers use online heavily for local shopping purposes at various points in the purchase funnel. Online search has now surpassed word of mouth in terms of the most used form of media for local shopping.

Loyalty programs have also proven to be a key way for local business and consumers to interact. These types of programs are expected to create even stronger connections between consumers and local businesses than already exists. On average, a consumer is a part of 8.8 customer lists. And why do customers join so many of these loyalty programs? Discounts and deals of course. Within the last 6 months, 26% of consumer local purchases were made through promotions or sales.

So where does social media play into shopping local? Social media is a growing platform that 1/3 of our CCM respondents said they use more or much more for local shopping than they did last year. Of those respondents, 2/3 said that Facebook was the specific form of social media used.

As far as accessing local shopping information goes, mobile is key. The most common method for accessing local shopping information on a smartphone or tablet is searches according to 65.9% of survey respondents. Apps were the most used by about 10.7% of respondents but those who used apps were committed to them. The average app user had at least 3.4 apps they used on a regular basis.

For information on BIA/Kelsey’s CCM survey, click now.