eMarketer: Has the recession changed how people shop online?
Scot Wingo: It has. I think what consumers do is they get more value-conscious
and they start to price-check a lot more. So we see that at ChannelAdvisor because we work with
comparison shopping engines and sites like eBay and Amazon. Consumers have more time and less
money. They’ve made a huge swing in how they shop.
“Consumers have more time and less money.”
Consumers will spend a lot of time looking for the initial best price, but then actively look at coupons and rebate offers and things of that nature.
eMarketer: Have comparison shopping sites achieved mass adoption rates or are they still a marginal destination for leading-edge online shoppers?
Mr. Wingo: I think only the tech-savvy folks go directly to them, but as other less tech-savvy
people explore online, they stumble into them through a variety of different paths.
eMarketer: Have retailers changed their online marketing priorities? Are they doing more of some things and less of other things than they’ve done in the past?
Mr. Wingo: Retailers are being very cautious about every nickel they spend.
“Retailers are being very cautious about every nickel they spend.”
One of the metrics that the consumer trend is generating is lower conversion rate on your Website. What that means is, people come to your site and don’t buy. We see retailers really hunkering down and taking a multipronged approach. No. 1 is really focusing on conversions.
No. 2 is exposure. A lot of these channels weren’t that important to retailers
because they were getting enough walk-by traffic. But now that consumer
behavior has changed and consumers are checking in multiple places, we’re
seeing a huge surge in demand by retailers to look at eBay, Amazon, and then
maybe they’re on one or two comparison shopping engines and now they want to
get on all of them.
If the consumer is going to check three or four places, retailers want to be in all those places.
eMarketer: Have Web retailers changed their advertising or marketing mix?
“Retailers are pulling back from the kind of CPM-based display ads that are hard to
measure.”
Mr. Wingo: Yes. Retailers are pulling back from the kind of CPM-based display ads that are
hard to measure. They’re focusing on search and other measurable kinds of activities. And we put comparison shopping in that same bucket because it’s very measurable.
They’re optimizing things a lot smarter than they used to. It used to be that maybe on Google you could go buy your brand, a couple brand terms, then a couple other things and you would have a really good program.
Today you can squeeze a lot of profit dollars out of the program by going into the long tail of terms.
eMarketer: Do you see certain types of retail business models having an advantage in a
recession?
Mr. Wingo: A lot of it has to do with who has the advantage on price and selection. Amazon has done really, really well and they’ve done it through a combination
of selection and value.
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