UK shoppers widening their repertoires, Shoppercentric

SmartTVs and wearable devices have yet to make an impact on shopping patterns, according to the annual Shopper Stock Take report from Shoppercentric, involving 1,020 UK consumers.

Computers/laptops were cited as the most used touchpoint – up 6% on 2017 to 63%. In second place was smartphones with a 18% increase on last year, to 45%. Tablets secured the third place spot with 29%, up 8% on 2017. And despite a number of retailers and brands moving away from catalogues, usage by shoppers rose to 22%, up 4% on 2017.

In terms of smartphones, the most striking shifts in usage were at the points of trigger and transaction. There has been a 7% increase (to 58%) in the number of shoppers that have been triggered to shop by content on their smartphone. Carrying out ‘research’ has remained on a par with last year at 61%. However, finding an item has risen by 4%, to 60%. There has also been a significant 7% increase in the number of shoppers using their devices to buy a product – now accounting for 42%.

Whilst 18-34 year olds are those most likely to use their smartphones to shop (66%), even 65+ year olds showed a year-on-year increase of 11 to 16%. In fact, 65+ year olds are just as likely as 18-24 year olds to shop on a computer/pc (64 vs 65% respectively) and 65+ year olds are more likely to use a tablet than 18-24 year olds (32 vs 25% respectively).

“Retailers and brands must keep a finger on the shopper pulse and appreciate that each customer is now using a range of strategies to cope with increasing pressures on household budgets. Which categories or sectors will suffer most this year is likely to depend on how they react to changing shopper needs,” says Danielle Pinnington, Managing Director at Shoppercentric. “If, as our report shows, shoppers are actively widening their repertoires, loyalty as we used to know it is an outdated term. This is not the year to hunker down and hope the storm passes over with limited damage. Now is the time to get out and about amongst today’s consumers and shoppers so that marketing strategies resonate with their needs, flexing as those needs change to cope with whatever 2018 throws at them.”