Categories: Articles

No Shocker – The Web Drives People To Retail

We keep having to banging this drum to get traditional Marketers to embrace the power of online. I’m happy to do it (I’ve been doing it since the early nineties). When consumers see or hear about a brand, product or service, they’re going online first. If they’re impressed or want to learn more, they’re heading down to the retail level. This was the dream of the online world back in the day, and it’s becoming more and more of a reality.

Just yesterday, eMarketer published an article titled, Retail Shoppers Hit the Web First.

"Eight out of 10 respondents who had recently made consumer electronics purchases in a brick-and-mortar store said they had visited the store’s Website first, according to a May 2008 Nielsen Online survey. More than one-half said they purchased from the retailer on whose Website they had spent the most time."

Granted, it’s an obvious fit for people online to be looking at consumer electronics, but I would not be surprised to find a similar statistic if we were talking about jewellery, power tools, clothing or hotels.

With more and more choices, consumers – naturally – want to be better informed. Coupling your marketing banter with content like consumer reviews, ratings and more enables your brand to spend more time connecting to potential consumers. What might be most surprising (and even more revealing) from this article is that the Web is even more powerful than word of mouth from a known entity:

"If they had to choose just one method of researching their purchases, 58% of respondents said they would choose the Internet — far more than would choose their own friends and family. "

Only 8% chose friends and family.

It just might be time to re-look at what you’re providing to people online, and what your competitors are doing.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.