Marketing Pilgrim's "Shopping" Channel

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Product Information is Key for the Showrooming Shoppers

posted on September 10, 2012

If you ever had any doubt about how attached we’ve become to our mobile phones, take a look at this graph from Vibes.com.

After you get past the 11% of smartphone owners who keep their phones on hand while showering, take a look at the “While Shopping” column. 82% of smartphone users have their phone with them when they shop, and they’re using them to make sure they get the best deal.

Showrooming is when a shopper uses a brick and mortar store to touch and try a product only to buy it online. It may seem like a concept that is new to the mobile era, but it actually goes way back to the days when stores knew the meaning of customer service. By putting out only one display model of a product, retailers saved space and lowered instances of theft and breakage. Consumers would choose the item they liked, then “order” it on a form, which was then taken into the warehouse to be filled or they could order it to be delivered through a catalog service.

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A Third of Consumers Plan to Do Their Holiday Shopping Online

posted on August 24, 2012

Just hear those sleigh bells jingling, Ring-ting-tingling too . . . that’s the sound of holiday shoppers creeping up over the hill. Is your site ready for the onslaught?

According to a new survey from coupon site RetailMeNot.com, 31% of consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online this year. This is close to last year’s estimates of 36% so they’re probably in the ball park.

Online retailer could score a little higher this year due to the growing trend in mobile device shopping. More people than ever will be using their smartphones and tablets to order online while they’re sitting on the couch watching all the new fall TV shows.

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Groupon Visits the Bargain Basement

posted on August 21, 2012

At the height of the daily deal explosion, you could get a fabulous dinner for two at a trendy restaurant for half price. It was exciting. It was a way to live large on a small budget. It was new.

Fast forward to now and look what Groupon has become:

Shaun T’s Rockin Workout and bamboo trays? It’s the stuff of late-night infomercials and it’s sad. I live in Orange County, the eating out capital of the world and out of sixteen available offers, only one was for a restaurant and it was sold out. The rest were for spas and tourist attractions and “goods.”

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In the Online Food Biz, Coupons and Recipes are Tops with Moms

posted on August 15, 2012

I grew up with this box on my kitchen counter. Inside were index cards with recipes, some handwritten, some clipped from magazines. It was the go-to box when we were bored with meals or looking for a special treat for a party and it contained around fifty recipes.

Today, my recipe box contains fifty thousand recipes and counting. They’re all searchable by ingredient or by category. They can be printed, saved, grouped, shared and diced up to create a shopping list. Oh thank you, world wide web.

According to Clicks & Cravings: The Impact of Social Technology on Food Culture, a new study from The Hartman Group and MSLGROUP Americas, “59% of online moms said they had searched for recipes or food preparation tips on the web or via social media while preparing a meal in the last thirty days.”

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Mac Owners Love eCommerce but Social Media is a Hard Sell

posted on August 13, 2012

When it comes to ecommerce, Mac owners take the cake (the decorations, the plates, the party favors. . . ) with the highest average order value of $102.83. But the real surprise is what comes next. It’s not the PC owners, it’s the iPhone users with 97.49.

The numbers come from Monetate’s Ecommerce Quarterly data report for Q2 which looks at online shopping trends. And while you can’t control what device people use to shop, you can control how they access your e-store in the first place.

According to Monetate, that social media link that we all love so much, isn’t doing us any favors.

  • Social media referral traffic lags far behind email and search, with the Average Order Value (AOV) of social traffic $26.21 less than search traffic and nearly $20 less than email referral traffic

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With Sales Force Turmoil, Groupon Can’t Get Out Of Its Own Way

posted on August 13, 2012

Groupon is a bit of an enigma isn’t it?

It does tons of business but it has the reputation that implies that the business it does is often in spite of itself. Now, as it prepares for its third public reporting of results Monday, the news is that the lifeblood of the company, the sales force, is at best, under a ridiculous amount of pressure or, at worst, jumping ship.

The Wall Street Journal reports

Groupon Inc. is facing a new hurdle: strains on its sales force.

Such pressures are a boon to people like Mike Silagadze. The chief executive of education-software firm Top Hat Monocle Inc. said that over the past month, his Toronto start-up has received hundreds of résumés from Groupon sales representatives who may want to jump ship. Mr. Silagadze said he interviews a couple of such people each day.

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Almost Half of All US Smartphone Owners Use Shopping Apps

posted on August 7, 2012

Shortly after I bought my iPhone, I discovered shopping apps and after that, I never left home without it. My original favorite was Shopkick. Walk into a store, tap the bubble, get coupons and accumulate gift certificate points. Why not? I was going to shop at that store anyway, so Shopkick was a bonus. Then a weird thing happened, I let Shopkick tell me where to shop for holiday gifts. I went into stores I wouldn’t have visited otherwise and at that moment, I became the perfect user.

According to new numbers from Nielsen, 47% of American smartphone owners used a shopping app in June 2012 and they accessed these apps an average of 17 times during the month. What’s really interesting is the mix. Take a look at the top 10 shopping apps from June and I’ll meet you on the other side.