Research
Using the web and digital marketing to drive store sales makes sense, and we have the research to prove it.
Research Online, Buy Offline: The Impact of Online Pre-Shopping on Consumer Shopping Behavior
A joint Yahoo!-comScore study showing the impact of search marketing and display advertising on consumer shopping behavior and the in-store sales of 5 major retailers. It was based on 9 months of data for 175,000 consumers in the comScore panel.
Key findings:
- In-store sales start online: up to 89% of consumers pre-shop online before making a purchase in the store. (This behavior is called ROBO: Research Online, Buy Offline.)
- Online advertising drives six times as much in-store sales as online sales.
- Each $1 spent on online advertising drives $20 in combined in-store and online revenue.
- Combining search marketing and display advertising brings a higher return than using either one by itself.
Local Search Marketing in a Multi-tasking world
A joint TMP Directional Marketing-comScore study from November 2008 showing how consumers use online search to search locally.
Key findings:
- For the first time ever, search engines became the primary source of local business information, ahead of the print yellow pages or white pages directories, though the latter still come in a close second.
- Online search is increasingly used to research offline purchases (ROBO behavior).
- Mobile search is common among users with data plans.
Consumers who use search engines to find information about consumer packaged goods more likely to be brand advocates
A joint study between the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMP), comScore, Procter & Gamble, and Yahoo!, released in November 2007.
Key findings:
- 52% of consumers who search online for information on CPG products are brand advocates that share their recommendations with friends and family, compared to just 38% of non-searchers.
- Consumers who search online for information on CPG products are also more open to influence, considering more brands before they choose one, but after purchase are more brand-loyal.
The Web’s Impact On In-Store Sales: US Cross-Channel Sales Forecast, 2006 To 2012
A Forrester Research study released in May 2007.
Key findings:
- The study estimates that almost $400 billion of in-store sales – which amounts to 16% of total retail sales – are directly influenced by the Internet, as consumers Research Online, and Buy Offline (ROBO).
- It estimates that ROBO shopping will grow in future at a compound annual rate of 17%, growing to more than $1 trillion of in-store sales by 2012.
- Consumers continue to buy in-store after researching online for three main reasons: immediate gratification, the ability to view and interact with the product before purchasing it, and to avoid shipping costs.
Four Essential Metrics For Cross-Channel Measurement
A Forrester Research study released in August 2008, which discusses the challenges in quantifying consumers’ cross-channel buying behavior, and how doing so makes it possible to make sound decisions on investments in multi-channel marketing.
It recommends four primary metrics:
- The total number of hybrid (cross-channel) customers, measured by surveying customers about the channels they used for researching their purchase, particularly ROBO (Research Online, Buy Offline).
- The distribution and spend level of these hybrid customers, measured by determining the mix of different customer types (online-only, offline-only, multichannel) and their relative spend levels. Other studies have shown that multichannel customers spend more on average than single-channel customers.
- True conversion, i.e. including all forms of conversion whether it occurs at the store or online. This avoids understating the true return from online marketing programs.
- Level of customer spend with competitors, which can be measured both with online panel data such as Hitwise or comScore, and with customer exit surveys.
Online Display Advertising: Metrics For Proving Success In A Recession
A Forrester Research study released in March 2009, which recommends moving away from simple measures for measuring display advertising campaigns such as cost and reach, to more sophisticated techniques that measure success against campaign goals and which can account for multi-exposure attribution.
Key points:
- Basic banners remain popular, but rich media banners, including video, have seen increasing adoption as the technology and necessary infrastructure have become mainstream.
- ROI measurement remains the primary challenge with display ads for 51% of interactive marketers.
- CPM continues as a standard metric, with CPC and CPA increasingly popular for direct-response campaigns. An emerging metric is CPE (Cost Per Engagement), though it is rarely comparable across campaigns.
- Existing metrics place too much emphasis on the “last click”. Newer tools, such as DoubleClick’s view-through metrics, Microsoft’s Engagement Mapping Framework, agency-supplied tools, and site analytics tools such as Unica and Coremetrics, allow more accurate attribution to all stages of the conversion funnel.
- Cross-channel metrics quantify the value of online campaigns more accurately. For example, a study by Unilever found that an online campaign alone generated a 4% increase in purchase intent, but an integrated campaign that added print and television generated a 14% lift.
Multi-Channel Retailing
An eMarketer study from February 2008 studied multichannel shopping behavior by consumers.
Key findings:
- US consumers routinely use multiple channels, even in the course of a single transaction.
- eMarketer estimates that in 2007, $471 billion in U.S. retail stores sales was influenced by online research, while retail e-commerce sales were worth just $136 billion.
- They forecast that web-influenced store sales (Research Online, Buy Offline – ROBO) will grow 19% annually through 2012, when it will exceed $1.1 trillion, compared to a 12% growth rate for e-commerce sales.
Online is the New Primetime
A webinar presented in April 2008 by Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore.
Key findings:
- The Internet’s reach now exceeds TV’s from 7 am to 8 pm
- The Internet will shortly pass Radio to become the second-most used medium, after TV
- Despite the rapid growth in online advertising, it still receives only 7% of total spending
- When measuring the effectiveness of online campaigns, it is important to include offline sales and latent effects in overall measurement of advertising effectiveness. For example, of the retailer sales driven by Search campaigns, 16% is online, 21% is latent online (influenced but not directly linkable), and 63% is latent offline (not directly linkable because conversion occurs offline)
- CPG is a significant opportunity for online advertising: nearly 50% of all Internet users search on CPG-related terms or visit CPG-related web sites.
- The sales impact of online campaigns is on average nearly 4 times higher with the inclusion of offline sales
- Search and display work better in combination than either one alone.
Discover what many of the nation’s leading retailers already know, that ShopLocal helps connect with shoppers.Contact Shoplocal today to learn more.
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