Emails, product reviews, and shopping apps are “star” tools to drive customer engagement according to the Ryan Partnership Digital Shopping Tool Impact Study 2013.
The study found that shoppers rank tools depending on their ability to influence their shopping behavior and satisfy their shopper needs. The Ryan study, which covered 16 different digital shopping tools, revealed that emails from brands and retailers, online product reviews and shopping apps are considered most useful by shoppers and most likely to impact shopper behavior.
While daily deal websites and brand and retailer social media efforts are considered strong behavior changing tools, shoppers rate them as less useful than these other tools. Search engines, brand websites and retailer websites, while considered very useful, are not as likely to impact shopper behavior.
“Shoppers today interact with brands across channels throughout the purchase process,” Kim Finnerty, Senior Vice President of Research and Insights at Ryan Partnership, said in the study. “In recent years we’ve seen an increase in the use of digital tools when it comes to shopping and the influence these tools are having on purchase behaviors. As the discipline of digital shopper marketing matures, it is critical that marketers understand which tools to deploy, and how, in order to most effectively deliver on their specific marketing objectives.”
Here are some other key takeaways from the study:
Different tools are better at driving certain types of behavior—shoppers claim that social tools, such as online reviews and brand and retailer social media efforts are better at inciting new product trials, while “shopper outreach tools” such as email and texts from brands and retailers are more likely to motivate impulse or unplanned spending
The computer remains the “go to device” for accessing digital shopping tools, but virtually all tools, which are available on multiple screens, saw significant increases in both smartphone and tablet access this year
Retailer-owned, mobile-enabled tools (such as retailer emails, texts and social media) are the most likely of the multi-screen tools to be used in-store, and are an important way to reach shoppers at the point of decision-making
Both retailer-owned and brand-owned tools impact shoppers’ choice of store, underlining once again that both constituents need to work together at the strategic and tactical levels for their mutual benefit
Ryan Partnership surveyed a representative sample of more than 10,000 primary household shoppers using an online survey, inquiring about their usage of 16 digital shopping tools in 12 retail channels and 12 product categories.