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Amazon quietly tests letting customers shop from third-party websites

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Until now, the company has kept shoppers inside its ecosystem.

The pandemic was unkind to many businesses, but others saw it as an opportunity to fine-tune their e-commerce business.

Take Amazon. It saw a surge in revenues and profits during 2020 and 2021 — up 220% at one point — and has managed to maintain double-digit growth in its e-commerce sector each year since.

While e-commerce still accounts for a small minority of overall retail revenues (around 16% in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce), there are a few dominant players.)

Walmart, Target, and eBay are a few of them. But the uncontested leader is Amazon, which commands nearly 40% of the market, according to Statista. In fact, the other nine of the top 10 retailers combined add up to barely 22% of the market.

Historically Amazon has preferred to keep customers inside of its ecosystem, a “walled garden,” as it’s known in the tech world.

A man with a bank card in his hand sits at his laptop and looks at deals on Amazon's online shopping site. Lead.

Amazon is the dominant e-commerce platform, accounting for around 40% of revenue in the sector.Image source: picture alliance/Getty Images

How ‘walled gardens’ benefit tech companies

In general, keeping customers inside an ecosystem gives a company more control over their experiences. By the way, Amazon is not alone in this practice. Plenty of other companies do the same thing, including Apple, X, and Facebook, to name a few.

In the case of Amazon, the walled garden structure gives the company total control over what users can see and do on their sites. It controls the advertising that can be shown on its site, and it controls all the data it collects.

Amazon is able collect data about customers’ shopping habits and product preferences and then target them with ads and special offers.

It all gives Amazon a competitive advantage that has helped it remain the dominant player in the e-commerce space.

Despite Amazon’s dominance, some brands have chosen not to make their products available on the platform. Now Amazon is testing how it can make some of these products available via its platform anyway.

Amazon testing a way for customers to ‘shop directly’ from brands

Amazon recently revealed it is testing a new feature called “Buy for Me” among a subset of users in the Amazon Shopping app.

The feature, which is currently in beta, “helps customers discover and seamlessly purchase select products from other brands’ sites if those items are not currently sold in Amazon’s store,” according to a company announcement.

Amazon is testing a limited number of brand stores and products. It plans to roll out to more customers and expand offerings based on feedback.

Customers who currently have access to the feature can search for specific brands in the Amazon Shopping app, and in some cases they’ll see relevant results from Amazon and third-party sellers. They might also be shown additional products from other stores in a separate section of search results labelled “Shop brand sites directly.”

Customers can link directly to these sites, or in some cases, customers will see a link to Buy for Me.

Amazon says it is not charging brands a commission for these transactions.

“We’re always working to invent new ways to make shopping even more convenient, and we’ve created Buy For Me to help customers quickly and easily find and buy products from other brand stores if we don’t currently sell those items in our store,” said Amazon Shopping Director Oliver Messenger.

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Dana Sullivan Kilroy has been a writer and editor for more than 20 years. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Real Simple, Self and Outside and on digital platforms including BabyCenter, Everyday Health and WebMD. You can email her here.

Sourced from TheStreet

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Five Trends Changing The Way Customers Shop In 2022

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By David Wagoner

I’ve always done at least some of my holiday shopping in person. I love a wintery store window, and once I’m inside, I’ll instantly remember everyone on my list who doesn’t have a pizza stone (you’ve got one, right?). This year, though, I didn’t bust a single door. Online deals were better, and with Covid-19, I didn’t feel like hanging out at the mall.

I wasn’t alone. According to data from Sensormatic Solutions, Thanksgiving retail foot traffic was down 90% and Black Friday shopping was down 28% from 2019. Meanwhile, overall holiday sales in the U.S. increased by nearly 11% since 2019, with a 61% increase in e-commerce sales, according to data from Mastercard.

While e-commerce captured lost brick-and-mortar sales over Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM), not all merchants benefitted. Deal strength, inventory and site performance have emerged as key performance differentiators for online brands.

What will move the needle for shoppers this year? With an indebted nod to Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein, who created this annual prospectus for 2018, here are five trends that I believe are poised to transform shopping for the better in 2022.

1. Mobile Shopping (Actually, Really) Takes Over

I know, I know. Every year, a business guru with giant forearms tells you why mobile is the future of e-commerce. But we’ve been living in that future for a while, with mobile shopping accounting for just over half of online sales on the Shopify platform since 2014. In 2021, mobile shopping from merchants on the Shopify platform hit a watershed, capturing 71% of online sales over BFCM.

(Full disclosure: P3 Media is a Shopify partner.) 

Mobile commerce has been buoyed by the rise of branded shopping apps, 5G wireless, faster e-commerce platforms and seamless social shopping. With technology at a tipping point, I predict that customers are likely to buy from their phones more than ever this year.

Expect more branded shopping apps, more personalized text message (SMS) marketing campaigns and a flood of branded TikTok and Instagram content, all of which were often outperforming revenue drivers in 2021.

2. The End Of The Slow Web

As we just discussed, one reason mobile sales now outpace desktop sales is that technology has caught up with our desire for convenience. But just as adding a lane to a highway can increase traffic rather than improve it, introducing better tech doesn’t fulfil our expectations so much as enlarge them. Mobile shoppers tend to expect a better experience than ever now. And in a world where convenience is king, “better” often means faster.

How much does site speed impact sales? One analysis found that, for load times of zero and five seconds, “Website conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42% with each additional second of load time.”

There are lots of ways to improve your site speed no matter which e-commerce platform you use. But one great method is to move to a mobile-first software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform. At P3 Media, an e-commerce marketing agency, we’ve seen this type of platform boost mobile conversion rates for our clients as much as 66% overnight.

3. Increasing Focus On Sustainability

Trends pass, but our growing concern over the impact of e-commerce on the planet is a sea change. In the U.S., 71% of millennials say climate change is our most pressing social issue. And we’re voting with our dollars, too. In 2020, IBM found that over two-thirds of purpose-driven consumers will pay a premium of 35% for a more sustainable purchase.

In response, companies are offering products conceived to be gentler on the planet. These brands often use low-impact dyes and upcycled materials, and many also offset shipping emissions by integrating sustainably focused checkout software.

A great example of sustainable fashion is ThredUp, which has systematized brand buy-back and resale programs, reducing fabric waste. Meanwhile, ready-made corporate social responsibility programs, like 1% for the Planet and Fashion Makes Change, are helping established brands weave sustainability into their DNA.

With so much at stake and so many resources for merchants interested in sustainability, I believe 2022 will be the year when online brands begin wasting less to make more.

4. Supply Challenges Create New Engagement Opportunities

In October, I ordered a pair of Reeboks from Urban Outfitters. They arrived after Christmas, but I wasn’t upset. Every time my fulfilment date changed, I got an email explaining the delay, with an option to cancel my order. Those touches preserved my sale; although I had to wait, I was never in the dark.

With the global supply chain in flux, we’ve all grown accustomed to waiting longer for orders. But we haven’t grown accustomed to waiting weeks or months for an update. We simply won’t tolerate radio silence.

In 2022, I predict that more brands will turn delays into demand by adding “preorder” and “notify me when available” functionalities to their shopping experiences. Routing these notifications through email and SMS will be crucial to keep shoppers engaged, and timely communication around fulfilment will become a competitive differentiator.

5. Everyone Will Try “Buy Now, Pay Later”

Instalment plans are as old as shopping, but so-called “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) payment options are new to e-commerce. Spoiler: They’re already hugely popular. From 2020 to 2021, the use of a “buy now, pay later” service by American adults increased by 48%. Fifty-five percent of consumers have already tried BNPL at least once, and a study from Juniper Research projects BNPL sales to grow from $226 billion in 2021 to $995 billion by 2026.

BNPL’s heaviest users are shoppers with light credit histories who make purchases with debit cards. But I see that changing quickly as e-commerce giants like Amazon add BNPL options to their payment gateways.

BNPL still only makes up a small proportion of online sales, but shoppers are adopting the convenience of instalment payments at record rates. By the end of 2022, I predict it will be a ubiquitous checkout option, putting all kinds of goods within reach of more shoppers.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By David Wagoner

David Wagoner is the co-founder and CMO of P3 Media, an award-winning digital-marketing and ecommerce agency based in NYC. Read David Wagoner’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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Social Media Shopping Is Expected To Reach $1.2 Trillion USD by 2025, According to Report

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Accounting for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

With the ever-growing digitization of retail, social media shopping is expected to reach $1.2 trillion USD by 2025, according to a new report from Irish consulting firm Accenture. The figure will account for 16.7% of all e-commerce spending.

According to the report, the global social commerce industry sits at $492 million USD in value and is growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 26%. The increasing figures are due to Gen Z and Millennial shoppers, who will account for 62 percent of global social commerce spending by 2025.

“The pandemic showed how much people use social platforms as the entry point for everything they do online — news, entertainment and communication,” said Robin Murdoch, global Software & Platforms industry lead at Accenture in a release. “The steady rise in time spent on social media reflects how essential these platforms are in our daily life. They’re reshaping how people buy and sell, which provides platforms and brands with new opportunities for user experiences and revenue streams.”

Digital shopping refers to product discovery and the check-out process occurring all within a social media application. Accenture’s report surveyed just over 10,000 individuals, with 64% of respondents indicating that they made a social commerce purchase within the past year. Although this represents a great opportunity for big companies, it represents substantial growth opportunities for small business owners as well. To illustrate, 59% of the respondents indicated they are more likely to support small and medium-sized businesses via social commerce. Additionally, 63% said that they are more likely to purchase from the same business in the future.

Check out the full report from Accenture for a comprehensive breakdown of social media spending growth.

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Sourced from Hypebeast

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Unlocking the virtual reality for the in-store shopping experience of the future

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By Stefano Hatfield

As brands and consumers seek a return to the physical retail space post Covid-19, the technology that has enabled ecommerce to fill the gap as stores were closed will play a vital role in the recovery of that same bricks-and-mortar retail. Shoppers, particularly in the UK, want a “connected shopping” experience.

The pandemic has obviously hit the UK high street, but shoppers are ready to return, particularly if the ease of online shopping is blended with the richness of the in-store experience. Some 40% of UK shoppers use their mobile in-store to look up more information on a product. And there is a huge increase (80%) among Gen X shoppers who say they will use augmented reality (AR) in shopping over the next five years.

These are the headline findings of a new report, ‘Future of Shopping’, based on a global survey of 20,000 shoppers by trends agency Foresight Factory, for Snap Inc. Technology, rather than sounding the death knell for bricks-and-mortar retail, has led to an irreversible shift to omnichannel that genuinely benefits both shoppers and retailers.

As we have seen over the past 18 months, when new technologies are built primarily around human behaviour, rather than imposed because of internal business needs, their impact can be positive. Yes, online shopping has disrupted bricks-and-mortar retail over the past two decades. However, technology has also helped retailers navigate the increasing overlap between online and physical environments, now a part of our lived experience.

The report reveals that consumers worldwide feel their shopping experience has been greatly enhanced by camera technology and accompanying digital innovations. It is clear that shoppers are keen to get back into stores, but they also want to keep all the advantages of technology when they return; for example, instant access to stock information or home delivery service.

Britons seem more wedded to online shopping, particularly for clothes, than others. Some 44% plan to do the majority of clothes shopping online, above the global average of 38%. Only 34% of Brits said buying in-store was their favoured method of shopping – compared with 43% globally. But nearly half (49%) of Brits missed the social aspect of shopping and more than half (51%) found the inability to try on products frustrating.

This desire to blend online and in-store highlights how vital the mobile phone has become across the shopper journey and explains why the new consumer habits forged in the pandemic are here to stay. However, consumers have missed the social component of physical shopping, so e-commerce advertisers need to greater humanize their brands online.

The report identified several other key takeaways:

Growth in e-commerce during Covid-19 will be sustained

81% of UK shoppers are expecting to do the same amount or more online shopping in the next 12 months compared to last year, with only 19% indicating they plan to do less.

A post-lockdown return to physical retail

Shoppers returning to store post-lockdown will seek the social and tactile experiences they have missed in the last year, albeit combined with the convenience and safety of shopping online. But bricks and mortar stores must act fast to ensure they do not lag behind shopper expectations.

Technology will drive shoppers into stores

Some 35% of global consumers would visit a store specifically if it had interactive virtual services such as a smart mirror that allowed them to try on clothes or makeup.

Mobile will connect brands and consumers across the shopper journey

One in three global consumers choose the mobile phone as their preferred shopping channel, and 50% of Generation Z and millennials say they never go shopping without using one. These trends will only continue, not least in the area of price comparison.

Virtual testing could accelerate e-commerce further

Some four in 10 consumers globally state that not being able to see, touch, and try out products puts them off online shopping. Retailers will therefore need to invest heavily in try-before-you-buy technology to help encourage purchase and reduce the potential need for returns, by enabling consumers to more tangibly engage with products.

Shoppers will demand widespread AR

Within five years we will see a 57% increase in Gen Z shoppers who use AR before buying. Significantly, 56% of consumers who have used AR when shopping claim it encouraged them to make a purchase. The mobile phone will be the core tool.

New technology could reduce the number of online items that are returned annually by up to 42%. The study estimates that the cost of online returns now amounts to around $7.5 billion each year – and £377m in the UK alone.

Resale platforms cement their position as a credible alternative

Four in 10 consumers globally have bought and sold something via resale platforms, which attract shoppers searching for cheaper prices and unique products. Second-hand goods no longer come with stigma, but are a more desirable, sustainable alternative. Retailers like Levi’s, Ikea and H&M are moving into the branded resale space.

The key trends identified above talk to the blurring of consumer needs and expectations across physical and digital shopping channels. They reflect shoppers’ primary demands (beyond pricing): convenience, social interaction and product testing.

Ed Couchman, general manager, UK, Nordics and DACH, at Snap Inc. says: “People thought the internet and technology was a threat to physical retail but this report clearly shows that those who harness the benefits of tech are best placed to thrive post pandemic. Shoppers want to read reviews, compare prices and try on items using AR – but they also enjoy the experience of going into a shop, speaking to staff, and looking at items. They want the best of both worlds.”

The ‘Future of Shopping: Global Report 2021’ from Snap is available here

By Stefano Hatfield

Sourced from The Drum

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The evolving consumer: How COVID-19 is changing the way we shop

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Sourced from McKinsey & Company

Consumer shopping and spending habits look different today. Which changes will persist? What trends should retailers bear in mind heading into the holidays?

The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has altered how, when, and where we shop and what we buy. Digital has become more important than ever, brand loyalty has been shaken, and spending levels and are still below precrisis levels. During a McKinsey Live webinar, partner Kelsey Robinson and senior expert Tamara Charm discussed today’s trends in US consumer spending—and which ones are most likely to stick.

Flight to digital: Digital adoption across sectors has increased dramatically in the past few months. Over the course of just 15 days, virtual appointments multiplied by ten. In five months, Disney+ built a subscription base that had taken Netflix seven years to achieve. Remote working, learning, and shopping likewise have surged. Reliance on digital was growing before the pandemic began, and a meaningful amount of this online penetration is expected to persist after the pandemic is over.

Shift to value: The increase in digital shopping hasn’t compensated for the decrease in consumer spending overall. One-third of Americans have reported a decrease in their household income during the crisis, and 40 percent say they are spending more carefully. Indeed, consumers expect to spend less in discretionary categories, such as apparel, vehicles, and travel, while more on essentials such as groceries and household supplies.

Shock to loyalty: Since the crisis began, three-quarters of US consumers have changed something about the way they shop, including one-third who have tried a new shopping method such as delivery or curbside pickup and nearly one-third who have tried a different retailer. Value—which might entail lower prices, promotions, larger package sizes, or less expensive shipping—is the primary reason for this unexpected shift to different brands. There has been a move to products that are less expensive.

Homebody economy: Only about a third of US consumers are engaging in normal out-of-home activities, and 80 percent say they’re concerned when they leave home. Spending reflects this shift, with more consumers spending money on at-home activities such as gardening as well as software and electronics for working—or learning—from home. When consumers do venture out, it’s most often to shop for groceries and other necessities.

New holiday outlook: Only 19 percent of Americans are optimistic about the prospect of a fast economic rebound in the United States. It’s therefore not surprising that 42 percent of US consumers intend to spend less on holiday shopping this year than last year, and roughly half, across multiple generations, expect to do more shopping online. In keeping with the renewed focus on value, it’s also likely that more consumers will pursue blockbuster holiday sales this year.

Questions and answers from the webinar

  1. What are your thoughts about how global markets compare with the US data?
    Across many countries, including the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and much of Europe, our five themes—flight to digital, shift to value, shock to loyalty, homebody economy, and new holiday outlook—hold to varying degrees. Asia looks notably different. In China, consumers are no longer ensconced in a homebody economy, as they regularly venture out for day-to-day activities. In Japan, the shock to loyalty was notably smaller: while in all other countries, more than half of consumers made a change, in Japan only about a third of consumers did. In India, there is positive spend momentum among the consumer class as consumers prepare for the holidays.
  2. Do you see a bifurcation with consumer perception of value? Are some consumers buying less but buying better, while other consumers are price shopping more often?
    While consumers across the board are looking for value in what they buy, lower-income consumers are trading down more than higher-income consumers are. In the higher-income bands, we’re also seeing consumers more likely to prioritize quality of goods and purpose-driven brands as reasons to try new brands or new places to shop, although the search for value is dominant.
  3. How do you think firms can create value during holiday season, especially for online shopping?
    For the holiday season, firms should think about the following:

    • Provide consumers with multiple options to fulfill orders (e.g., buying online, in-store pickup, and curbside pickup). Consumers have shown us that they will change retailers during COVID-19 as they adapt to a redefined sense of convenience. It will be important to provide consumers the products they want, when and where they want to buy them.
    • Motivate holiday shopping now. Given the rush to online shopping and anticipated fulfillment challenges, retailers have already begun to “pull demand forward”—through early product availability, surgical promotions or offers, and direct communications to shoppers.
    • Invest in digital infrastructure and operation logistics. Given the expected heightened traffic on websites and mobile apps, retailers should ensure that their digital/mobile storefronts and operational backbone can support the increase in volume. This also means upping warehousing and customer support (e.g., chat functions).
    • Build the basket. With less opportunity for consumers to explore and touch and feel products in stores, retailers will need to focus on personalizing the best assortment for each shopper, building baskets based on known customer characteristics, preferences, and categories, and SKUs with tailwinds this holiday season.

For more on this topic, please watch the webinar recording and read the article “Consumer sentiment and behavior continue to reflect the uncertainty of the COVID-19 crisis.”

Sourced from McKinsey & Company

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Can’t Imagine Going Back to the Mall? Maybe You’ll Shop at Your Best Friend’s House Instead

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By Emily Farra

Most of the retail headlines we’ve seen have focused on two types of shopping: brick-and-mortar and e-commerce. But that myopic view leaves out the various other ways people engage with fashion, like trunk shows and home shopping events. Consider Sarah Easley’s two-year-old endeavour, Maison Marché, which essentially creates a pop-up shop in your living room—and introduces you and your friends to a few dozen independent or emerging designers in the process. Most of her events, or “fêtes,” as she calls them, take place in New York and throughout the tri-state area, but she’s brought her “fashion circus” as far as Aspen and Mexico City. Wherever she goes, the takeaway is the same: “There’s an authenticity to it, and it’s completely based in reality,” Easley says. “It’s wonderful designers in pretty spaces, surrounded by your friends.”

That sounds particularly nice right about now, since most of us haven’t seen our friends in months (let alone gone shopping with them). But Maison Marché has been affected by the coronavirus just like any “store”; Easley’s last event took place in early March, and she swiftly cancelled everything she’d booked for April, May, and June. “I hit a full pause,” she says. “But slowly and surely, brands started reaching out to me, and my clients were reaching out too.” Designers who had just received their spring collections had nowhere to sell them and hoped Easley might be able to help, while clients were coming to her for a mood-boosting pair of earrings or a fun blouse to wear on Zoom calls. So she began experimenting with a virtual fête through Instagram, sharing one independent designer a week and taking orders directly from her followers. “It’s a very engaged group of women,” she says. “I’ve sold about 25 units a week, which is typically what we sell before lunch at an event. But I’m so happy to support these designers in a small way, and my clients are super happy.”

Easley also has a team of freelance stylists who are staying in touch with clients and facilitating sales when necessary. That personal connectivity is no doubt a huge part of Maison Marché’s success. But Easley’s edit of brands is also key: She’s passionate about supporting small-batch, artisanal, and sustainable designers, and is careful to avoid “mood overlap” between brands. There might be a casual, utilitarian label like Nili Lotan next to a more bohemian one, like Warm or Isla & White; the goal is to avoid redundancies and the frustration caused by the choice overload of e-comm sites with their daily new arrivals. With most of her customers at home, Easley is promoting items with relaxed silhouettes, joyful prints, easy care—i.e., no dry cleaning—and friendly price points, mostly in the $300 range. “My team and I are posting on Instagram, sending photos [via text], and trying to tell the brand’s story digitally,” she says. “It’s been working really well for us.”

Sarah Easley
Sarah EasleyPhoto: Courtesy of Maison Marché

Easley doesn’t have a website, but is working on building one so more people can participate in future fêtes. She’ll continue her virtual sales throughout the next few weeks and is tentatively planning home events for July—with plenty of new protocols and social distancing measures in place. “I’m going to use a lot of outdoor space, so we can set up racks by the pool or on the lawn, and we’ll stagger appointments throughout the day so you really can be six feet apart,” she explains. “In most cases, these homes are pretty spread out. So I think it’s going to be more about keeping your distance than using tons of Purell and masks and not touching. But ultimately, the tone will be set by the host, because it’s her home and her community. I don’t ask hosts to do this—they ask me, and they invite their friends. So anyone who isn’t ready [to meet in person again] can wait until our next event in the fall.”

Still, most of us would probably rather shop at a friend’s house than at the local mall. That goes back to Easley’s initial inspiration for Maison Marché: After years of working as a buyer and retailer—she cofounded Kirna Zabete and sold her half of the company in 2016—she became acutely aware of how our shopping habits were changing. “So many people I knew were not going into stores anymore, and they were just having this lonely experience of shopping online,” she says. “But they also weren’t taking a risk on a new brand, because they didn’t know if the fabric was good, or what size they should get. And no one was shopping with a sister or friend anymore, because everyone is just too busy. But no one tells you the truth like your best friend! So my idea was to bring all of those things together.”

With the fate of department stores and physical stores in the balance, Easley’s nimble, ephemeral business model is primed for what comes next. “I feel really good about the Maison Marché model on the other side of this new world,” she says. “Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of stores will be able to reopen, and I don’t think people are going to be jumping on planes to go shop in big cities soon. But they’ll be happy to go to a neighbour’s house down the street and shop globally there.”

Feature Image Credit: A recent “fête” by Maison Marché in a client’s home.Photo: Andrea Ceraso / Courtesy of Maison Marché

By Emily Farra

Sourced from VOGUE

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Spotting too many ads on Instagram? Blame Facebook for it

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Sourced from The Economic Times

Facebook exerted more control over Instagram over the last two years.

If you have been seeing more ads on Instagram this year, you are not alone. Parent company Facebook reportedly instructed Instagram to increase the number of ads in the app towards the end of 2018.

According to The Information, Facebook exerted more control over Instagram over the last two years, including the move to rename the app, Mashable reports.

Facebook plans to bring Instagram’s revenue number closer to its own app, and will heavily rely on commerce to achie ..

Click HERE to read the remainder of the article

Sourced from The Economic Times

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Curalate CEO: Social media are leading to ‘major, major shift’ in shopping

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By Bob Fernandez,

Consumers clicking on social-media posts are changing the way Americans shop, the top executive of a Philadelphia tech company says.

In a holiday season that has already set online sales records, a survey commissioned by Philadelphia’s Curalate Inc. says that 76 percent of Americans — or three out of four shoppers — have bought products they were exposed to on a brand’s social-media post.

The OnePoll survey points to a shift in consumer behavior as shoppers find shirts, slacks, dresses, shoes, and other items on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat through a brand’s feed, or sponsored ads. OnePoll surveyed 1,000 consumers online over the summer for Curalate, which spent $2,000 for the research.

It’s not surprising that the highest proportion of those shopping through social-media posts were millennials: 82 percent of respondents between the ages of 25 and 34 had bought a product after seeing a social-media post on it.

But the OnePoll survey also showed that significant numbers of baby boomers are influenced by social media, indicating the ubiquity of the platforms. According to the survey’s results, 67 percent of respondents between 55 and 65 years old had bought a product after seeing it on social media.

Five-year-old Curalate, with offices in Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, and London, helps companies promote their products through social-media feeds and instantly creates online catalogs of products for consumers, branded as “Showroom.” The company believes that brands need to make it easier for consumers to discover and impulsively buy products they see online — they way they do when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores.

“We are witnessing a major, major shift in consumer behavior” as social-media posts function similarly to billboards that advertise products or department-store windows that draw consumers into a product or brand’s website, said Apu Gupta, Curalate’s cofounder and CEO.

Social media have been undervalued by marketers, who are looking for click-through-to-purchases but many times don’t find them on social media, Gupta said. Instead, he noted, consumers discover products online and eventually purchase those products days or weeks later. According to the survey’s results, 65 percent of shoppers viewing a social-media post purchased at a later date, and 20 percent did so in a physical store.

The survey’s findings seem to reflect a certain momentum for social media’s influence on shopping activity.

A March 2016 study by BigCommerce, an Austin, Texas, e-commerce platform, and research firm Kelton Global indicated that 23 percent of consumers reported being influenced in their purchases by social-media recommendations, with 30 percent saying they would make a purchase from a social-media network such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, or Snapchat. That study did not specifically look at how many people viewed social-media posts, then eventually bought the items they had viewed.

Based on sales numbers released by Adobe Analytics Data on Tuesday morning, Cyber Monday was the biggest U.S. online shopping day in history. Use of mobile devices, especially smartphones, accounted for just more than half of sales and nearly 40 percent of revenue. Adobe reported that $6.59 billion had been spent online, a 16.8 percent growth year over year. Revenue driven by smartphones hit an all-time high.

According to the OnePoll survey, Facebook was the platform most popular with shoppers, with 52 percent of respondents saying they had discovered a product on it. The comparable data for other platforms were Pinterest, 22 percent; Instagram, 18 percent; Twitter, 17 percent; and Snapchat, 7 percent.

Feature Image: 

Jessica Griffin / Staff Photographer

Curalate CEO Apu Gupta talks to his employees in Philadelphia in September. Curalate is one of the leading tech companies in the city, with relationships with dozens of retailers and hundreds of brands. It’s pioneering ways for consumers to discover stuff they want to buy online.  

By Bob Fernandez,

Sourced from philly.com

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