Report: Always-on consumers, showrooming among 2013 retail trends

New York -- A new report by Experian Marketing Services finds that several key retail trends will impact how marketers shape their messages in 2013.

According to the 2013 Digital Marketer Report, consumers today are multi-device and multichannel shoppers, forcing digital marketers to adapt and evolve their message to reach consumers across channels and all along the path to purchase.  

It also found that 74% of marketers surveyed have either coordinated, or are in the process of coordinating, customer interactions among both online and offline channels.

“The way consumers gain information from brands — the means by which they get it, even the ways in which they process it — is constantly evolving given the complexity of our multichannel world and evolving consumer behavior driven by economic variables,” said Bill Tancer, general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services. “With the recent retail numbers coming out of January, retailers can anticipate consumer hesitation, making it imperative that marketers create integrated customer experiences and maximize digital marketing opportunities and return on investment.”

Among the key findings:

• Showrooming will continue: Comparison shopping continues to be strong as shopping sites are the third largest driver of traffic to other retail sites. In fourth quarter 2012, shopping sites accounted for 19% of referral traffic on average to the top 500 retail sites;

• Economic uncertainty will also continue, but online retailers will still benefit as consumers search for better deals and consumer awareness continues to improve with more retail information readily available;

• Consumers are “always on”: Fifty-nine percent of adults say they email from at least two different devices during a seven-day period. Nearly one-third of adults under age 35 email from three or more devices each week; and

• Maturing mobile market: 48% of adults ages 18 to 24 say that a conversation via text message is just as meaningful as a telephone call. A similar share of adults ages 25 to 34 feel the same way; in a given month, 8% of all smartphone owners report having shopped from their phones, whereas nearly 40% of tablet owners say they shopped from their tablets.