2014 Holiday Insights: The Omnichannel Approach to Holiday Shoppers

If you think marketing during the holidays feels fast and furious, you’re not alone. Keeping pace with today’s consumer demands an agile multi-faceted strategy.

This holiday season, we’re seeing that, more than ever before, customers – your customers – have taken the wheel when it comes to shopping. If you’re not on every channel, offering bargains of every kind, there’s a solid chance you’ll get passed by.

Today’s holiday shopper is omnichannel -- browsing and buying both online and offline. They know a good deal when they see one (mostly because they’ve done plenty of research and read tons of reviews). And they’ll wait to purchase in order to save with last minute deals and free shipping.

Speaking of free shipping, if you don’t get in this game, you might as well close your virtual doors today. Customers expect free shipping and, turns out, it’s working. Almost half of all retailers offered this incentive in 2013.

When it comes to understanding this season’s holiday shopper, here’s what you need to know:

They’re smart.

They’re on smartphones.

And if you don’t offer up some freebies or discounts – you’ll get about as much love as a stale fruit cake.

To help you evaluate your current holiday strategy, and make it easy to leverage what you learn this year for next, we’ve compiled the latest holiday shopper stats for your consumption. Review the information. Save it. Be thankful for all the success you’ve had thus far this year. And get ready to shoot for the stars in 2015.

Unwrapping the Holiday Shopper: Part 3.