This year’s holiday shopping season is certainly one for the record books. According to the National Retail Federation‘s holiday report, the connected consumer dominated holiday shopping deals with e-commerce outperforming in-store shopping over Thanksgiving weekend and Cyber Monday seeing an increase of 1 million additional shoppers.
What’s more, the biggest shopping day of the holiday season was “Super Saturday,” December 17, with nearly 66 percent of Americans—roughly 155.7 million consumers—taking advantage of holiday deals.
In an effort to better understand the holiday shopping habits of the connected consumer, IZEA commissioned a survey asking consumers how they decide before they buy. Well, the results are in and we discovered some surprising findings, some of which can definitely help retail brands shed some insight into how potential customers’ purchase decisions are swayed by content and influence.
Surveying more than 100 connected consumers ages 18-50+ from across the nation, our findings are as follows:
51 percent of participants finish their holiday shopping the week before the holidays begin.
89 percent of participants primarily shop for their parents during the holiday season, with friends (66 percent) and spouse (48 percent) following close behind.
91 percent of participants do their holiday shopping exclusively online, with only 55 percent reporting visiting a brick and mortar store and 47 percent visiting a mall.
47 percent of participants visited 3-5 websites prior to purchase, while 46 percent only visited 1-2 and 6 percent visited more than 6.
Deals were the biggest driver of purchase intent, with 84 percent of participants responding that price had the biggest influence on them.
38 percent of participants cited product reviews as having a major influence on purchase intent, followed closely by recommendations from friends and family at 35 percent.