Participants:
Keegan Edwards – President/CEO of New Media RetailerDerek Hughes – Sales Manager of New Media Retailer
Video Transcript
KE: Welcome everyone to the New Media Retailer podcast. Today, I am thrilled to have Derek Hughes joining me. Derek Hughes is the Sales Manager at New Media Retailer with many years of experience working directly with independent retailers and helping them be successful online, so it’s a great guest to have on the podcast today. Derek, thanks for joining us.
DH: Yeah, thanks for having me. Welcome, everyone. I’m excited to be here. I think we’ve got a really interesting topic today talking about statistics for consumers, and yeah, let’s dive right into it. Awesome.
Using Google surveys for market research
KE: Just to give a little bit of background here, we conducted at the beginning of this year a survey using Google surveys, which is a tool that Google offers where you can conduct legitimate surveys to find out any different types of information you want. Basically, one of the main ways it’s used is to do market research. And when you conduct a survey, you can conduct it to the point where you get to a model margin of error that’s no more than two and a half percent. Now what does that mean? It means that Google asks so many people these questions across so many different demographics and markets that they get to the point where they say the answers that you’re going to see to these questions are within a margin of error of two and a half percent in either direction.
KE: What that means in layman’s terms is these are pretty accurate surveys in terms of what the consumer is actually thinking and feeling in the United States right now. We ask these questions because obviously as we come out of the pandemic, people are changing their buying habits, and we really want to understand how people are buying and interacting with retail stores. As Derek mentioned, we’re going to share these consumer survey insights and talk about them a little bit and what they might mean and how a retailer might need to react to them.
Consumers conduct product research and do so primarily in Google
KE: So without further ado, we’re going to jump right into this and talk about the first question that came up in the survey. So the very first question we asked folks was where do you research products that you want to buy? The overwhelming answer — and customers, or potential customers of yours could choose more than one answer — but the overwhelming answer was Google at 62.9%. So 63% of respondents said that Google was the place where they research products that they want to buy.
DH: I’m actually going to take it a step back before we dive into the ‘where,’ but what’s the keyword that people are researching in the first place? So if we look at this chart, you’ll see it’s listed as “None” there, and 0.2% of people saying, “Hey, I’m just not doing any research before I’m buying these products.” It means roughly 99.8% of people are doing some sort of research online or in some capacity. And it’s important to understand ‘where,’ and we’ll get into that in just a second here, but understanding that people are researching, right. And we see the biggest block on there is going to be Google.
DH: So as a retail store, if people are researching and Google, what can I put there? What can I have to make sure that they’re finding my business? Well, there’s a lot of different things you can have, but probably the first one that comes to mind is a quality website, right?
DH: You look down, and social media is in the top four. Amazon is also in there, but I think without looking too much at the ‘where,’ it’s making sure we understand the concept that consumers — which all of us are — we’re doing research in the first place. And then as we started going into these different blocks as a retail owner, we can start to say, “Okay, what can I do with this information to figure out the best way to market?” So that’s kinda my first takeaway, right? The question before I get into all the different aspects is, “Hey, 99% of people, according to this survey, are doing research in the first place.” So Keegan, I don’t know about you, but that was the first thing that jumped out at me.
KE: It’s almost like you’re right. There’s almost like a pretense there of “If I’m going to buy something, you know, I’m going to do a little research about it,” and that’s almost the first thing that we take for granted. I’m glad you find that out.
KE: Okay, it’s a given that a consumer is going to research the product they want to buy. So, and I think you’re right in the survey only 0.2% said “None,” that they didn’t conduct any research before. So then once they get to that point where they’re going to research and they’re choosing Google, I found actually interesting in near to only 0.1% of respondents said that they research in the store itself, that they wait until they’re actually at the store to look at alternative products and choices, so that research is also happening.
KE: You know, if we look at the ones that were the largest, Google by far is the largest followed by Amazon then, I guess, the retail store/mall. So 12% actually researched in the store. So that’s 12.3% if you add in the other one, then social media/newspapers/catalog. And then the rest were, were pretty small, like 0.1% basically for all the rest of the answers. 12% of people overall are actually waiting until they’re in a store before they start checking alternative products, so that research process is happening largely before anybody’s even in store.
50% of consumers have used BOPIS
KE: So now the second question here that we have is “Have you ever bought an item from a retail store using the curbside pickup or store pickup option?” And at this point, over 50% of people have bought something from a store or using curbside pickup or store pickup, which is a pretty drastic change from where it was even just a few short years ago. So Derek, what have retailers been saying about that curbside pickup option? Who’s implemented it, what they’ve been saying, and if they haven’t yet, are there any reasons why not? What are your thoughts generally about the conversations you’re having about curbside pickup as a way of shopping today’s today?
DH: Being on the sales side, getting to talk to a lot of retailers on the front, getting to speak to them at shows, I would say it’s probably been a few years now that just about every industry store has said, “I have to offer some sort of curbside pickup option.” Now that pickup option could be researching online, sending an email of what they want ahead of time, could be a phone call, or it could be as much as actually buying it if that store offers an e-commerce website, but curbside pickup is something that people want. And why is that? Because it’s convenient, right? As consumers, we’re always searching for convenience. And, you know, we’ll dive into local delivery and home delivery here in just a few minutes. But I think, if you don’t mind me sharing this, I have been seeing some research with Google trends.
DH: And one thing that I wanted to share is — feel free for any listeners out here if you ever want to use this to your advantage — Google trends allows you to pick a search term, pick a geographic location, and then pick a timeframe in which you want to see those results. So what we did is we looked at curbside pickup. We looked at the entire United States, and we did it over a 12 month span. And I think we did it a few months ago. So basically we got to look at February of 2020 to February of 2021. And what Google does is when they look at these results, they say, “Okay, we’re going to rank this search term based on the geographic area in timeframe from 0 to 100, 100 being a very, very popular search, and 0 not so much.” So when I was looking at it right before the pandemic, in March of 2020, curbside pickup across the United States was roughly around 6 or 7 out of 100. So not extremely popular, but people are looking for it.
DH: Once the pandemic hit, it actually skyrocketed from a 6 out of 100 all the way to 100 out of a 100, and why was that? Businesses were closed down for in-store shopping. You had to offer the curbside pickup option. Now, as we’ve gotten closer to the other side of this pandemic, we’re starting to see that trickle down a little bit from 100. For the past four or five months, it started to flatten out. But what’s interesting is it’s not flattening out back at 6 or 7 anymore. It’s actually hovering around 24-25. So if anything, this pandemic — especially with curbside pickup, which stores have been doing for a few years — consumers now, according to the Google trends, are about 4x more likely to research a business that offers a curbside pickup option.
DH: So as we get our lives and our businesses back to hopefully normal, we’re getting closer day by day. We have to understand as a retail owner, there’s kind of a new normal now, right? If 4x more people are likely to search for a business that offers curbside pickup, as a retail owner, I would want to be saying, “What can I do with my business, whether I’m doing call-ins or I have forms on my website? Maybe I’m actually diving all the way into e-commerce, but I think that’s something to really understand is there’s kind of a new normal now moving forward, and I think that pandemic kind of put a giant spotlight on it. I’ll just add in, as well, that I use curbside pickup in many facets of my life on a daily basis.
How product searching in Google has changed
KE: Yeah, as do I. I was thinking, as you were talking about that with Google trends, that we’re seeing that people are self-identifying, “When I researched products, I’m going to start with Google. That’s where I’m going to research products.” Then what this kind of tells us too, with the rise in the trend of the search term “curbside pickup,” along with seeing over 50% of people have now bought something from a retail store using curbside pickup, well, what are they doing when they look in Google? They’re looking for the product, and they’re looking to see if they can buy it locally for curbside pickup. Right? You kind of compare those two things together and say, “Okay, I don’t just go to Google and say, you know, I’m here. My wife and I just bought wild bird seed from local ACE hardware.” We didn’t just go to Google and search for wild bird seed. I search for “wild bird seed near me, curbside pickup” and looked for where I could buy that, we could swing through, and pick up. I had an idea of what brand we wanted to get and, you know, I know where the ACE hardware is. I know where a few local retailers are here in my neighborhood, so I had an idea of where I was looking for. If I still Google it, you know, see what the prices are, see where the products are, but then it’s almost that that search is kind of paired with two things now. I’m not searching in a vacuum for wild bird seed. I’m looking for wild bird seed near me, curbside pickup. I see that that’s available somewhere around here, and that’s my product research. And I think I’m the consumer, and you’re the consumer, that our independent retailers are after. So we’ve got to understand that’s kinda how it starts.
DH: Yeah. Yeah. And I think you bring up a really good point. Going right into your example with the search, you’re looking for wild bird seed, and you had that “near me” aspect in there, right? I think a lot of us over the past few years saw that shift in how consumers were researching. They weren’t just saying, “Hey, I’m looking for a wild bird seed. No, I’m looking for a wild bird seat near me.” And now we’re at the point where it’s, “I’m looking for bird seed near me that also offers a curbside pickup or pickup option.” So it’s, that shift of it used to be just “type in what you want and you’d get these scattered results.” Now it’s “Type in what you want in the area or near me now, it’s I want it in my area near me with this option.” So it’s kind of just that evolution. We’re very spoiled by Google, right? You just type in a few words like that and they bring it all right to you. But that is how people are shopping now.
KE: Well, and there’s these modifiers, right? So it’s like, okay, “wild bird seed.” Now let me modify that with “near me.” Now, let me modify that with “curbside pickup option.” Now I’m going to take it a step further. We’re into the place of as consumers expecting our third or fourth modifier on that search, which is “what does it cost” and “is it in stock,” and being able to see that too. Well, that’s almost our expense. So as a consumer we know, and that’s why in Google, if retailers put this information on their website, if they make that available, Google highlighting it in Google search results, they’re bringing those businesses up. And that’s why people are using Google to research products. So they know I can find this product near me available for curbside pickup and it’s in stock. All this stuff. And that’s why I just go to Google and find out all that. And what’s hard and what’s a little disheartening is that the big box stores know this, and they’re making that available. The independent retailers are kind of lagging behind at that. Not all of them, but many of them. And that’s where we encourage them. Let’s push that all the way through with what the big box are doing, make sure it’s on your website that way so that when consumers make these searches, you’re the one who’s coming up. Not just Tractor Supply or Petco. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Cool.
The growth of home delivery
KE: Let’s see what other questions came out of the survey and answers. So have you ever ordered something from a retail store for home delivery? And now this one actually was pretty shocking to me because this was such a high number. And again, I think accelerated by the pandemic and a trend that continues afterwards, 60% of consumers in the US said they had ordered from a retail store for home delivery and another 3.3% said they plan to, so we’re at 63% and gaining in terms of the number of consumers who are ordering from retail stores for home delivery. What do we think about that and its importance and what it plays now and into the future when it means to be a retailer?
DH: I think we’re taking the conversation from a few minutes ago and we’re just taking it a little bit further, right? It’s convenient to do that — search online, have Google provide you with that business, have the convenience of a quick curbside pickup now. Hey, let’s make sure they don’t even have to leave their house. Let’s take these consumers that want the convenience of the product being brought to them. And I think this goes not just for the industries that we serve, but really for consumers in any industry. Everybody likes convenience. Now I’ll raise my hand and I’ll say that I actually really like going into stores. I really like going in, being able to physically see what a retail store offers, and kind of feel the ambiance, if you will. You get to meet with the employee, see what they have. You can get those personal recommendations because they’re the experts at their store and what they sell and offer, but for lack of a better phrase, sometimes life gets in the way, right? Sometimes you don’t have the ability to on a Saturday make multiple stops to different businesses, but if they offer some sort of online sale or pay over the phone and can bring it to me to make my life easier, those are things I’m willing to pay for. So I think it’s really kind of just taking what we just talked about with curbside pickup and going a little bit further. Also if we did a Google trends on this one too, it’s very, very similar to in-store pickup. When the pandemic hit, curbside pickup rose all the way up to 100. It didn’t increase 4x as much like curbside pickup, but it was about 1-1.5. Now pickup/delivery is something that you could see widely used before the pandemic. But I think the pandemic, similar to curbside pickup, has really just enhanced that to another level. And I’ll just ask you, I’m not sure. Do you use local delivery with different types of industries or against businesses that you buy from regularly, or is it kind of hit or miss?
KE: No, that’s a great question. I’ve used it much more than I had in the past, and it’s not just the pandemic, but we also have a toddler. So it’s not easy, right? Yeah. It’s not easy to get to the store. So when it’s not, it’s great to go on and have that home delivery option, especially for things like cat food from our local pet retailer. They offer a local delivery, thankfully, and it’s much easier for us to just say, “Oh, we’re out of cat food; they’ll deliver it.” And they do it next day, pretty quick and speedy delivery. So we can have the cat food to ourselves the next day, which is fantastic. And so we use it for that. So I would say it probably depends on industry a little bit for us.
KE: It also depends on timing too, because what you’ve brought up is a really good point, too, that feel of going into a retail store, that’s actually fun for us and our toddler still to go into different stores. You know, I mentioned that ACE hardware that we shop at and the pet store and even the vet’s office too, those are places where there’s a great environment and experience that you can’t replace, especially when I have a question or you need to pick up a few different things, what you might need for a project, whether it’s around the house or in the backyard.
Omni-channel shopping is important to consumers
KE: So what I guess the takeaway is at least from my perspective, people aren’t one thing or another, right? They’re not a home delivery buyer. They’re not a just in the store buyer. They’re not an e-commerce buyer. They’re not just curbside pickup where the consumers are answering these questions. The cross section of them are shopping in a number of different ways from the retail stores. They like that experiential retail, that chance to go into the store. Sometimes they need the home delivery option. Sometimes they’re out and about and the curbside pickup option, hit a few different stores that they need one or two things from each is the better way to go. I think we’ve heard from the retailers that have evolved into this conduct omni-channel, you know, that’s kind of a buzzword, but selling in multiple different ways. They see orders in all of those different ways. They see volume in the store, they see home delivery orders, they see store pickup orders and shipping orders. Some of them too, who have done that, they see orders happen in all different ways, depending on their business.
DH: And I want to piggyback off of this. I think this could come up again with one of the other questions, but I think I want to take a second and actually hone in on what you’re talking about, just to make sure that the audience is really digesting. This is that no customer, like you said, shops in just one specific way. There’s a variety of ways in which they shop. Well, some of the feedback that I got probably a few years back when we really started helping retail stores with e-commerce and selling online and utilizing needs curbside pickup and local delivery options was, “Yeah, my sales are up month, over month right now, but it’s not all new customers. In fact, what I’m seeing is I’m seeing current customers spending more with me, and it’s because I’m now offering variety in how I can serve them.”
DH: So as a retail owner, I obviously want people coming into my store. I want to build those relationships. So I’ll use gigging. You use an example here, you have a cat, right? Let’s just say your budget is $50 per month that you spend on your gallery, maybe. Well, we’ll say a hundred dollars per month. Well, let’s say, you know, maybe you like going into a specific, you know, local pet store or wherever you go to buy food treats toys, but again, life can get in the way. So maybe you only spend $50 in that store and then you spend $50 online. Well, if that retail store that you don’t go to, if they don’t offer a curbside pickup option, they don’t offer e-commerce, they don’t offer delivery to you. Then you might have to spend that $50 elsewhere. So to bring it back, a lot of those retail owners are saying, I’m seeing my current customers spending more of their budget with me.
DH: And we’ll get into this a little bit as we talk about products and research and a little bit more with some of these other questions, but that’s the thing I really wanted to kind of jump in on is when you offer these, it’s not always that you’re just going to get all these brand new customers, right? Like that is the goa: to grow. But I think you’ll see a lot of your current clientele that’s coming in once a month. Well, they’re going to start shopping with you twice per month, maybe once in store and once online because of this delivery option. So I think that’s important for retail owners to know is like you said, customers don’t shop in just one specific way, make sure you’re catering to the way that these consumers are operating.
KE: Yeah. I think we heard some good stories too. I’m trying to think of which retailer it was, but who talked about how they had customers who would always come in and buy dog toys and treats and maybe would buy buckets and things for their backyard flock, but they weren’t buying their dog food from them. And they were like, “Hey, you’re a great customer. You know, you’re in here every few months to buy a bunch of dog toys, treats, you know, different things. Where do you get your dog food? Do you mind if I ask you how come you’re back?” They said, “Well, I just put the dog food on, on auto shipping from Chewy,” but they don’t know when they need a new toy.
KE: They don’t know which treats or bones or, you know, things that they might want. And I think this particular customer is like a feed and pet store. So they also had a backyard flock. They come in when they need things for meal worms or their chickens, you know, things like that, or chicken food, and that would bring them into the store. But the retailer had recently started doing local delivery and set up an e-commerce site and was able to win that entire business back, that 360 degree business. from the customer, because they said, “We’ll deliver it to your door. So I buy everything for me. We can offer that same thing now.” And you want to keep that customer sticky to you because you want them to start clicking away in ordering their treats and toys. You want to win them back. So that’s a great point, you know, what this does to increase sales just from your current customer base, because you’re serving them in the ways they need.
The importance of offering subscription ordering
DE: Perfect. I think that might even bring us to our, to our next question as well here. All right. Let’s see what we got. So if you did that on purpose, or if that was just a segue that worked really well.
KE: Oh, well, we’ll never know. So question number four, do you buy new products using auto-ship or on a subscription? And we have 23.9. So 24% of consumers said yes, that they are buying at least one product on auto-ship or subscription. And 3.3% said they plan to, so a little over a quarter of consumers now to a product on a subscription. That could be any product if you left it open-ended right. That could be dog food. It could be a hair supplies. It could be a facial product, right. It could be makeup. who knows? They’re subscribing to some product from somebody. I subscribed to Dollar Shave Club for my razors, right? So it could be anything, but subscriptions have about 25% of consumers. If you’re asked four people, one of them is subscribing to a product on an ongoing basis. So go ahead, Derek.
DH: Well, I think this the only story I have talking about auto-ship. I don’t have too many. I do have some services that I have on subscription and a couple products. Not a whole lot for me personally, but if I had a pet similar to you, Keegan, I’m sure that would be something that I would partake in, but some of the feedback — and lot of my stories are going to be from the feedback, talking to a lot of these retail owners — is with auto-ship. It’s great for projecting out a big part of your business, right? Sometimes you have certain products that you get delivered every, every Monday, right? They get delivered weekly. Sometimes you have seasonal products. Sometimes you have those products that you’re testing out, and you’re not really sure how they’re going to sell or when they’re going to sell. Some of the feedback I’ve gotten from retail owners that do have a subscription model with their business and their website is it helps us plan.
DH: It helps us plan. A lot of these unknowns from a retailer on our side is I know roughly over the next six months, rounding out this calendar year, how many I’m going to sell of this particular product just based on my online subscriptions from now until the end of the year. So how much inventory to buy, right? No one wants to sit on inventory that long. You don’t want that to be wasting money. It helps with projecting buying. It helps with projecting revenue. And I know that once I can get them on a subscription, if I can give them the service, the experience, the products they want, and they sign up for that, odds are, they’re just going to continue. I’m sure that Keegan with Dollar Shave Club, you probably don’t even think about it, right. You just know roughly how long it’s going to be between needing a new set of razors, right?
DH: So you set that up with a certain timeframe. You don’t even think about it, your card’s attached, and then you just get that product automatically, right? There’s no thought that goes into it. Same thing for you, retail owners. If you have products that make sense for your consumers, and they need them monthly — and I’m sure consumers know roughly how often it is that they need certain products — you can get them on the subscription model. You’ve taken some of the thought and some of the research out of that product, because they’re already with you. So I think to your example, with the store owner that said they were buying their dog food from Chewy, and then they were coming into the store for other items, they probably weren’t thinking about their dog food. They know was bought through Chewy.
DH: It was automatically going to show up at their doorstep every three weeks. And until that retail owner said, “Hey, we can do the same thing,” He was only getting half of that customer’s budget. So auto subscription is great. I know for the, for the subscriptions I do have, I don’t think about them. I know just on a monthly timeframe, it gets taken out of my account, and then I get that service or I get that product handed to me which is really nice.
KE: Yeah, for sure. There’s that set it and forget it mentality from the consumer when they know it’s something that just need all the time. It’s nice for the retailer. It works for the retailer, and it works for the consumer really well. So win-win, we’ll say.
Online product availability factors into in-store traffic
KE: Let’s see. We have for the next question. So question number five. Do you look on a store’s website to see if a product is available before visiting that store? So yes is the resounding answer to that. There was only a quarter of respondents — around 26% — that said that they hardly or never look at a store’s website to see if the product is available before visiting that store. For the rest, 42% said sometimes, 18% said mostly, and 12% said always. So when we’re looking at the rest of it, 75% of people, at least sometimes look at a store’s website to see if a product is available before driving to that store.
KE: And that’s pretty consistent with what we’ve seen. You know, if we think about it, why wouldn’t you, right? Why would you wait and drive to the store to see if it’s there and what it costs? We talked about Google earlier, talked about people, researching people, value their time. And if you know that for most products, you can look online and just see if it’s there and what it costs. You know, Target, the retailer, was kind of a big case study in this. They were probably one of the first movers and did well during the pandemic because they had all their products and inventory online. They did well throughout this because people knew, “Hey, here’s something I may need. I’ll just go to Target’s website. I could see if it’s there. I can see how many they have. I could see if it’s available before I even get in my car and drive there. Why would I waste my time and drive there if it’s not there?” So again, some retailers have led the way in this, and the consumers have said, “Yeah, that makes total sense. That’s the way. I’m going to buy from that one.”
DH: Glad you brought up Target. And again, I don’t know if you did this accidentally or purposefully, but I think I possibly sent you that article for their Q3 last year, about how well Target did. And, it was one of my first purchases. Once COVID hit, you know, a lot of us were working from home in some capacity and I needed better desk, cause we didn’t know how long we were going to do that. So I went to Google. I was one of those 63% of people. And I just started researching home desk and I was looking at all these different models, price points, what could fit, what I needed, and I kind of found a model that I was interested in and found it on Target. Well, sure enough, there’s a lot of Targets and I couldn’t guarantee which target might carry this particular desk or have it in stock.
DH: So I went to their website, found the location that was closest to me, and sure enough, I think they had like 2 or 3 in stock. I can tell you, going back to that experience, I was never just going to drive to a Target because I know they offer home desk in a hope that I could walk around the store and find something, because if they didn’t have a price point or a certain type of desk that fit what I needed, well, that could be an hour out of my day, and I’m still empty-handed. So I think it’s really important and maybe not just a home desk, but in all aspects, people want to know, not only do you carry this, but is it in stock right now? Because if I’m going to get my car and drive to you, then I need to know it’s worth my time. Right? Like you said, people’s time is valuable. We’ve talked about the convenience of curbside pickup, the convenience of local delivery. Well, if they don’t choose either of those options and they’re actually going to come to your store, make sure you don’t waste that opportunity. Make sure you’re giving them the information so that they know that when they get there, it’s going to be a pleasant experience for them. So that was just a quick story that I had.
Offering delivery influences where consumers shop
KE: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I’m going to jump to the next question too. I feel like that one’s pretty clear. How do people feel about buying from a retail store that does not offer online ordering? And we can see here that you know, people are still likely to order from a store that doesn’t offer online ordering. But there is a kind of a growing percentage here that’s unsure, right? So we have 56% about who say that they’re likely or very likely to buy from a retail store that doesn’t offer online ordering. But then we have a pretty big portion here, the rest saying they’re unlikely, very unlikely, or not sure if they’re going to order from a store that does not offer online ordering. I found that really interesting because, you know, we obviously, as a company, build online ordering capacity, but we also build websites that are just informational and have a catalog online to give people information about whether the products there and w whether it’s sold.
KE: And you can still say whether it’s in stock or not, whether or not you’re selling online. So actually, when I think about that one, it reminds me that the different markets are different, right? So consumers in maybe an urban market, or maybe a more spread out market, or maybe a rural market are going to react differently across the U.S. and have different needs when it comes to what they’re going to look for from a retailer. And many of them if a store offers, e-commerce, they’re going to buy that way. But it goes back a little bit to what you and I talked about two or three questions ago when we said that people don’t buy just one way. I think that’s why when they answered this question, so many people were like, “Well, yeah, I’ll still buy from this store.”
KE: “I won’t make all my purchases there as we’ve talked about. Right. Because when I do need to buy for home delivery or curbside, they don’t offer it, so I’m going to have to find another solution, but I’ll still buy from them. It’s just going to be less.” That’s kind of what I took away from that one. It reinforces that people buy in a variety of ways. And so if you’re a retail store, you don’t absolutely need e-commerce, but it’s a good idea if you want to capture all of that business that you’re in-market consumers have to offer you this way.
DH: Yeah, my first thought was, going back to the farm and feed store, the one that you spoke to where that consumer or that customer was only spending a portion of their budget that they spend every month on their pets inside the store because they liked the convenience outside. I know me personally, if a store doesn’t offer online sales, it doesn’t mean that I won’t go there. I’m still probably likely to go into the store, but for the times that I do need a quick curbside pickup, when I need it delivered or brought to me, and they don’t have an e-commerce website, they’re not going to always get my budget. If they did offer that, then they might get my full budget. So I think that kind of piggybacking off what you said is that people shop in a variety of ways, so you need to offer your products and your services in a variety of ways to really meet those consumer demands for sure.
A strong social media presence can increase sales
KE: All right. Let’s see what we found out with question number seven. So how important is a retail store’s social media presence in determining if you will shop at that store? The largest portion said it doesn’t matter, 33.5% said it doesn’t matter. And there were very 21% that said it’s not very important, 30% were neutral, which left about 15% who said it was important or very important. What are your thoughts on that Derek?
DH: And, you know, this one was an interesting one for me, because I don’t think that if a business had a — I guess I’ll use weak for lack of a better word — social media presence, whether they weren’t as active or maybe they didn’t have as engaging posts, I don’t know if it would deter too much with how I shopped with them or what I thought about them, but to kind of flip that around, stores that are very good at social media can definitely increase sales. The reason I say that is that I know there are products that I have bought specifically because I’m on Facebook or Instagram or another social media platform, and d that business is putting out brand new products. They’re highlighting discounts. They’ve got a cool video that maybe isn’t even salesy, it’s just engaging. So while a company’s social media might not take me away from them completely, they could be missing out on some sales by not being as active, not being as engaging. So I’m not sure how you look at that one, but I know that there’s money left on the table as a retail owner. There’s money left on the table that you could get from your consumers by just doing a little bit better job at social media. That could be more frequent posts, engaging contests, giveaways. There’s a lot of different ways you could be better, I guess, but I, I know for me personally, the better you are, the better chance that you’re going to get part of my money,
KE: Right. That question might not be the best worded, right? Because it’s like, well, social media’s value is going to be in your brand awareness and building that brand. And then it’s like, okay, we’ve kind of breached the awareness of the consumer. Now they’re going to buy. It was your social media presence that reached them and got them to kind of say, “Hey, what is this business? What do they sell?”
KE: On the flip side of that too, even though it was a smaller number, I did find it interesting that 15% of people still said your social media presence is very important in whether I shop from you, too. So even though it’s not big, a little over 1 out of 10 consumers, you know, or one out of eight, whatever that amounts to are going to say, “Yeah, I’m going to check that out and make sure that your values align with mine before you’re a place I shop with.”
KE: 15% can make or break your business too. So I kinda look at that two ways. You’re right. All right a majority of consumers aren’t even going to look or going to be turned off by it, but some are going to care about it a lot. And then outside of that, like you said, that question doesn’t really tell the whole story too. There’s a reach there that’s associated with social media that you still have to pay attention to.
DH: I think one thing to note too is, and, you know, by no means, can I predict the future here, but I think with social media, younger generations have grown up with social media at very early stages of their life. They’re constantly using it. They know how to use it. They know how to interact with it. They know how to make the most of it. As these younger generations get older and they start having some of this buying and purchasing power, it’s important to make sure that you’re not neglecting that at all. I think it’s tough to put an exact date on when social media was first, I guess, necessary or really important. But I think social media moving forward has to be a big focus for retail owners. Because again, the younger generations that are coming up, they’re now the ones that are spending the money, and they’ve grown up with Facebook and Instagram and they’re interacting with their friends, but they’re also interacting with companies and businesses, like you said, do my values kind of align with this company and what they do on social media.
DH: So yeah, I think you just want to make sure you there if you’re not there already. Cause I know a lot of stores do a good job on social media, but if you don’t think you’re there yet, it is something I would start working on moving forward.
25% of consumers want promotional emails from their favorite stores
KE: Okay. Bringing us down the line to our last few questions. Three more. This one is a big one too. Do you like to receive promotional emails for stores you shop with regularly? Almost 25% said yes, and we’ve got to stop and think about that there, because that question is asking, “Do you like when I advertise to you?” and a lot of people don’t. Like right there, your gut reaction is going to be no, right? I don’t want you to mail things in my house. I don’t want you to stuff my inbox. I don’t want you to call me. That’s our initial reaction. But in this one we asked, “Do you like to receive promotions, emails from stores that you shop with?” 25% of people said, “Yeah, I do. Right. Give me those.” It’s 1 out of 4 customers that said, “Please email me things that you have going on in your store.”
KE: “If I shop with you, I want to hear from you.” And the others, they won’t give you your email address or they’ll unsubscribe. And then 20% said that they’re unsure. So to me, I look at that and say we know email marketing. We’ve always seen it as one of the best return on investment marketing tools that you can use. And I think this starts to tell the story of why it is, because it’s one of the few things where a good percentage of people are going to say “Yes, please promote your business to me in that way. I would like you to promote your business to me like that.” And that’s pretty awesome, right? If you’re a retailer, you got to take advantage of that from my perspective.
DH: Yeah, definitely. I think for the majority of emails that I get from companies, whether it’s new products or discounts, that’s the best thing about promotional emails. It’s always something’s on sale or something’s discounted or something’s brand new. So I look forward to those right now. There could be some businesses that I just signed up just to get one discount that one day maybe I didn’t plan on really regularly shopping there, and, you know, I just unsubscribed to those. But for me personally, as the consumer, I want to know when things are new. I’m want to know when things are on sale. You have upcoming events — and I’m talking about kind of all the industries as a whole — but I definitely want that. And also to take the flip side and look at it from the retail owners perspective, right,
DH: You talk about marketing your business. We’re talking about how consumers are. I want you to kind of think about it in this context where if, let’s say Keegan has a pet store, right? And if I’m online and I’m searching for a certain brand of pet food and I come to his website because his website had the product, the brand on there, and I found them, that’s all proactive by the consumer, right? Like I’m going out of my way to do the research because I want something. Same thing with Facebook or social media. I’m logging in, or I’m on my phone, and I’m clicking on the app and I’m scrolling until I come across your content. But again, that’s proactive. That’s what’s great about email marketing and why it has such a high ROI. Your consumers don’t have to do anything, right?
DH: You’re sitting there and your saying, “Okay, for the month of June, what do I want my clientele to know about? Well, I’ve got brand new products, right? My store hours are changing. I’ve got this upcoming event for around July 4th. I want as many people to know about that as possible. My consumer doesn’t have to do any proactive research. I’m telling them here’s everything you should know about my business and why you should stop in or check out our website and I’m going to send it right to you.” You know? And maybe some people don’t open the email, but even if they don’t interact with that email, they don’t click on anything. You’re continuing to build your brand by continuously sending these promotional e-blasts out. And I guarantee you, if you send out enough emails that say 10% off, 20% off new products, eventually they’re going to say, “I want to take advantage of this, right?” So that’s just kind of one thing I really like about emails. It takes the proactive step out of the consumer and it puts it in your hands. So really it’s just a matter of you, as the business owner, or if you have somebody that takes care of it for you, you get to be proactive. It’s on you to make sure everybody knows about this messaging.
KE: And I liked what you said too. Even if somebody doesn’t open it — like what’s a retailer, sporting goods — I’ve been a sporting goods customer for a long time. I’m on their e-blast list. I don’t know if we open it, right? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But when I don’t, I look at my inbox, I see “Email From Sporting Goods” and I delete it, but you know what just happened? I just thought about sporting goods for a quick second, right? Like that’s really top of mind about that retailer. And that’s what we know about that marketing. You want to stay top of mind with your consumers all the time. That’s really important. So as a retailer, your best customers, they might not be thinking about that project and you could remind them, “Hey, this is a good time to put a deck on your house, or this is good.”
KE: Right? And all of a sudden you’ve just initiated a sale because you sent out an e-blast about how, you know, it’s decking season, right. If you’re a lumber and hardware store and all of a sudden somebody looks at that, they see the name, you know, they delete the first one, but you send another one, they say, “Oh yeah, I didn’t look at that last one. What is this? You know, maybe it is the right time to put a deck on my house this year.” And all of a sudden, boom, you just had a big sale as a result of that. That’s why that’s such a good return on investment. Cause you’re reminding your best customers about you, about things you’re offering, whether that’s 4th of July sale, whether it’s decking season, whether it’s, you know, all these different things. It’s just such a powerful tool to be in front of your best customers and remind them about you. Right? So they don’t drift off, but also give them a reason to come into the store.
DH: Yeah. and I think the one that comes to mind right now — kind of piggybacking off the lumber, but maybe more specifically hardware — is it’s Father’s Day coming up very shortly. And I know a lot of the hardware stores that we work with, because I see a lot of the emails that go out and just from previous years, is you’re sending out e-blasts. Maybe they look at a few, but you continue. And then all of a sudden, it’s two weeks before father’s day. And you’re like, “Oh, well maybe I’m going to give them that, that Weber grill this year, or maybe I’m going to get them a new set of power tools.” Right? Maybe there is something that your store offers, and you’ve just continued to put your brand and your messaging in front of me over and over again. So now when I’m actually in need of something similar to you, like the sporting goods, I don’t open every single email, but when it comes time to when I need something it’s “Oh, well, what’s at the top of my mind right now? I need a new pair of running shoes. Well, I get two emails a month from sporting goods, so it’s first person, I think of. Or hopefully for like the hardware stores and their consumers as they approach Father’s Day, if you sell drills or power tools or anything that, you know, might be a useful for a Father’s Day gift, hopefully you’ve been doing email marketing and you’ve kept yourself and positioned yourself as the top of mind resources for these consumers.
Convenience determines shopping preferences
KE: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Derek, last couple of questions. So all right, we can see here, the next question is what are your preferred ways to shop? So if you own an independent retail, store is great, it’s your preferred way to shop. So again, customers could pick more than one, right? So that’s where it adds up to more than 100%. But shop in a retail store is the top answer at 62.7%, shipped to your home is the second answer at 50%, then just shy of 20% is curbside pickup. Then at 15% was store to door, home delivery, and then the rest were kind of no preference or shorter answers less than 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.1%, many of them. So the four big winners are shopping in a retail store, the preferred experiential retail we talked about, then followed by pretty strong showing for shipped to your home curbside pickup, and delivery too. So, although shopping the store is the major way, I think we probably talked about this one, but people are shopping in a number of different ways. So, “Hey, I like going in the store most of the time, that’s my preferred way. But you know, there are times I’m going to need to do curbside pickup or home delivery and or have it shipped to me, and the retailers that can serve me in those ways are the ones that are gonna win my holistic business.”
DH: Yeah. And can you actually pull that chart up again? I just want to kind of highlight something real quick as I’m looking at this as a consumer. You know, whether if I buy online, you know, whether it is brought to me via a warehouse, shipping it, or somebody at the local store gets in their van and drops off the product, essentially I’m paying for convenience, right? So if you kind of look at the ship to your home and the store to door, home delivery, you can almost combine those two. And that’s going to show you how consumers are shopping now at the end of the day. Again, whether it’s shipped or delivered, the mindset is the products are being brought to me, and people really like that convenience. So again, you know, if you’re a retail owner, number one here is people want to come into the store. But you know, we’ve talked about this with a variety of examples, people also like convenience. And if you’re not catering, or if you’re only catering to one way in which people shop, yeah, you could be doing well and the business could be doing well, but there’s an opportunity to grow out there. And it’s important to make sure you understand what tools are available to you to take advantage of this.
KE: It’s a great point. You know, you’re making a great point. It’s almost like a two horse race here. You’ve got the in-store and delivered to me as my two preferred ways, almost coming up on equal ground there, with curbside pickup in third, as the one that jumps in from time to time, you know? So if you’re on that retail store, it really… this almost seems like a question we’ve got a parse out in future surveys. Maybe like, what do you mean by that? When do you shop at a retailers in store versus when do you do a curbside pickup? What are the times? We would probably design a survey to try and get deeper into what we’re seeing here, which is that people are shopping in a number of different ways and saying, “Yeah, you know, experiential retail or convenience, it’s a two horse game for me there.”
With an ecommerce website, a business never closes
KE: All right. Final question. Here we go. So when do you usually shop? We can see from the chart here, it’s pretty spread out, but the main answer, and we — again, I’ll let American consumers answer this in whatever way they want, and they could select more than one because people don’t just shop online at one time, and that’s it exclusively, but the winner was evening. 40% of people identified evening as a time that they shop online. Now, if you add in late in the evening, that bumps it up to 56% or a little over. 57% of people are shopping in the evening or late into the evening. And then we see that people shop on the afternoon. It was actually early in the morning, morning, middle of the day, and afternoon, you know, those were all kind of between 11 and 22%. So the biggest is definitely the evening followed by just a scattering throughout the day and early morning in terms of when people shop online,
DH: Not surprised. And I might maybe biased because I fall into the big block category there, evening at 40%. But actually I know I did a couple of seminars for the lumber and hardware industry, and I actually used this chart and this statistic, and I think a lot of people were also not surprised. I don’t think they’ve just thought about how they can use this data to help out their business,
KE: Right.
DH: With any type of business, you know, for Monday through Friday — and this is not everybody’s schedule, but this is a lot of people’s schedules — you might work a traditional eight to five, nine to five, right? You wake up in the morning, you’re getting ready for your day. You have your Workday. And it doesn’t mean right at 5 or 1, you’ve got free time. You might go to the gym, you’ve got to get groceries. You’re preparing dinner. You have other chores that need to get done. I know for me, personally, if I’m going to do any sort of online shopping or online research, it probably does not start before 8:00 PM because I have other things that I need to get done. And your average retail store, and I think this might even be the majority of retail stores, are not open at 8:00 PM, right?
DH: So if you are not open at 8:00 PM, but that’s when I’m doing my buying and doing my research, it’s really important to make sure that you have a website that’s hopefully, you know, delving into e-commerce so that your business is open 24/7. I think, the phrase I like to use is when you have an e-commerce website, your business has never closed. And it just piggybacks off of all these other questions where we say you need to cater to your customers and how they’re shopping in a variety of ways. If I can’t physically make it to your store, don’t make it so that I can’t give you my business. And by having an e-commerce website and allowing me to that buying and research online at night,
DH: Now you can get my budget, regardless of whether I can make it to the store or not. So I don’t know about you, if you shop mainly at night or you fall into one of these other categories.
KE: So I do both and you know, again, just come back to the toddler piece too, sometimes when she’s still sleeping in the morning that early morning is the best time for me to shop or do some online shopping before she’s even up. And I was thinking when you were talking there, you know, about the advantage that a retailer has now if they can set things up through right away from themselves. So have you ever done this? This is kind of a scenario that the independent retailer wins, you know, sometimes it’ll be like late on a Friday and I’ll say, “Okay, you know, there’s this project I want to do tomorrow, whatever that is, you know?” And, and it’s been a number of different things. It could be you know, making something up, but it could be, I need to aerate the lawn. It could be, I need a drill or a tool because I’m going to do some project, build a coat hanger or something like that around the house.
KE: It could be anything, right? So let’s just take the example of “I need to drill.” So I’m going to research and look late on Friday night, you know, and say, “Okay, where am I going to get a drill? I’d like to work on this project tomorrow on Saturday.” If I see that Amazon or one of the retailers, they’re probably going to have it, but they probably can’t get that drill to me by Saturday morning in time for me to start my project, right? But if I can’t find who else has it or sells it, I might say, “Well, I guess I’m going to do that project on Sunday or Monday, or this is going to push into the next weekend, but where the independent retailer can win is if I go and I look at my local independent hardware store and say, “Oh, they’ve got the drill.”
KE: I’m going to do a curbside pickup at that store tomorrow morning. Go pick it up. I’m gonna order it right now. Cause it’s 9 o’clock on a Friday night. Perfect. I’ll buy it right now for store pickup tomorrow morning. Are you ready for me? I’ll go grab that drill, come back and start the project because Amazon can’t get it to me until Monday or Tuesday. Right? So I’m going to wait. I’m not going to shop with them. I can’t get it in time. And you could take that same example and apply it to a pet food. You could apply it to a garden center. You could apply it to a lumberyard, right? That example is going to work. That’s where stores, I think, based on this consumer information, have to start thinking critically about, “Okay, let’s really dive into how somebody’s shopping. Like how do I win now? Because okay. They shop online a lot at night. Well, they can still get it from me quicker. I’ll deliver it the next day. Or they can do curbside pickup. If a lot of places they’re shopping, they can’t shop at late at night that night and get that product the next day. But you can from the independent retailer.”
DH: Yeah. I think you bring up a good point. I think typically people think of online retailers, and that the retail space trying to keep up with what they’re doing, but really this is an opportunity for the retail store to have the upper hand in the advantage. So I think one of the earlier questions was, do you want to see the product on the website before you go there? And not only do I want to see it, I want to see if it’s in stock. So to your example, you know, I think we all like to think we’re organized and plan, but if we’re being honest, we’re all last minute shoppers in some capacity. So, you know, maybe it’s not even until tomorrow morning that you decide you’re going to do that weekend project. Well, again, you just thought of it last minute, but you need the products and tools in 18 hours. As good as Amazon is. They’re not getting it to you in 18 hours, right? Like you’re going to have to find, and you might do one of those searches while wild bird seed near me curbside pickup, right? Or for the power drill or whatever product you’re going to need that food. Well, think about this. If you’re low on pet food and you’ve got maybe one more day, you cannot wait three days for that online order.
DH: You’ve got to find a way to get it sooner. So this is definitely an advantage point for the retailers and just making sure that your website has the product, has what you have in stock on there. You’re really taking advantage of a big market. I would imagine that I’m not the only one that does last minute shopping and needs products on a short-term notice. Make sure you’re positioned to again, take advantage. Sure.
Shopping will continue to evolve
KE: Yeah, and I think that’s probably the theme of all of this, you know, at the end of it is here’s data that we’ve talked about today, about how consumers are shopping, how they’re responding in this survey model to be very accurate in terms of what does a U.S. consumer think about? How do they shop now in stores coming out of the pandemic and going into the next 3 years, 5 years, 10 years of their business. Let’s understand, you know, you talked about that younger generation, what they’re doing, social media, talked about how consumers really have adapted to buying in a number of different ways — buying online, shopping in store, researching online, shopping in store, coming into the store, sometimes needing the convenience other times — what does your store need to look like? And maybe if you just touch on that to end it, what is your recommendation to a store at this point? What is based on this consumer data? I’m sure stores are putting together in their mind, “Oh, I need to do this,” but what would you say if you were to walk into a store and say, “Hey, I want to set you up for success for the next three to five years. Here’s what your online presence needs to look like and do to be that successful.”
DH: Yeah. I’ve got a couple of things here. I think that the simple answer is be doing everything you need to be well-rounded online. And it just goes back into people shop differently. I think, specifically talking about today’s conversation, having it completely up to date again, I think up to date is a very important word here. You need to make sure they’re seeing exactly what they would see as if they were to walk through your front door. So I, professionally, looking at an up to date website, specifically looking at the catalog, shows what you have, shows what’s in stock, but to take that a step further, you know, that’s just the website itself. You should be active on social media in some capacity, whether it’s just Facebook or you’re active in other channels as well to make sure you’re consistent. Not everything has to be salesy too. Sometimes you’re just trying to create brand awareness.
DH: Same thing with email marketing. Again, we talked about how that’s has a really high ROI to push because your consumers don’t have to be proactive. Make sure you’re doing all of these together. And the one thing I’m just going to kind of end with, cause I talk to stores about this all the time, is you need to understand that if you are just getting into e-commerce or you’re thinking about getting into e-commerce, right, hopefully today’s conversation has the light bulbs going off and you’re thinking about what can I do next? If any of you are baseball fans and you ever saw that movie Field of Dreams, I don’t know if you had a chance to watch that, but there’s the famous line in there that says “If you build it, they will come.” Part of that is true. When looking at e-commerce, understand that you can put the “Buy it now” button, buy your products, and have a professionally managed site, but understand that if consumers have not been used to going to your website for the past however long you’ve been in business.
DH: So we’ll say, Keegan, you’ve owned a store for 20 years. You’ve never sold online. If you build an e-commerce website and have zero marketing and zero messaging, it’s going to be tough for me as the consumer to just randomly think, “Oh, let me check out Keegan’s website and see if you just started doing e-commerce,” right? I think this is where it’s really important to make sure you’re building that website and that representation of your business to cater to all of these needs, but make sure you’re taking that extra step and getting the word out. Social media, email, digital ads, in store conversations. “Hey, Keegan, thanks for coming into the store today. Just so you know, if you can’t make it to our store, we just launched our brand new e-commerce website. We’ll deliver it to you, or you can select curbside pickup, just one to make your next visit convenient.” Right? So I guess that’s kind of how I’d end it is understanding there’s a lot of different ways in which you can improve your online presence and you should be taking part in really all of them, because I think it’s kind of a full circle here that works.
KE: I think we found the perfect, the perfect way. So this has been conversation with Derek Hughes, a sales manager here at New Media Retailer. And I’m Keegan Edwards, our CEO. Thanks for joining us, talking about these consumer statistics from our survey that we felt like every independent retailer should know. Thanks for logging in, and we’ll be keeping this podcast up to date in lots of conversations with retailers just like you. So if this is your first time joining us, please tune in to future episodes. We’ll talk to key players in the independent retail space about how their businesses are changing and updating and things that they’re doing to be effective so we can share that share these strategies with everyone. So thanks again. Thanks, Derek, for joining me. Awesome. Thanks everyone.