Christmas shoppers seek personalised online experience

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - 15:22 by Simon Crisp

British consumers are expecting their shopping experience to get smarter and more bespoke, according to the results of a new survey, conducted by Salesforce.

Almost a third of those questioned said that they want high street outlets to integrate intelligent location-based features by harnessing the power of smartphones and e-commerce accounts, meaning that as soon as you enter a store, your retail journey will play out in a personalised way.

43 per cent said that they would choose which retailer to shop with based on the availability of in-store and online technologies designed to streamline the whole process. And two fifths said that they would be happy to part ways with personal data, so that all of this could be achieved.

87 per cent revealed that they look up items via safe shopping online before they even think about heading to a physical store. This means that they have all the information ahead of time and can often outfox members of staff when it comes to knowledge of specific products.

47 per cent of the male respondents said that they feel that they are better informed than retail workers, falling to 36 per cent for women. And this reveals the power that e-commerce has given to consumers, whether buying via safe shopping online or heading to the high street to make a purchase.

Increased personalisation, of course, requires added investment from retailers and consumers must get comfortable with the idea of parting ways with private data to achieve this. This is not only because information is the currency of the digital age, but also because without knowing anything about a shopper, it is impossible for any kind of deep personalisation to take place.

This Christmas will see consumer expectations higher than ever and retailers may have a hard time living up to them.