Survey highlights

Multichannel shopping: Separating fact from fiction

Last year our first global survey of online shoppers revealed a world rife with online "experts" who shop across all product categories, not just music or books. This year we've devoted our survey to cutting through some of the hype and homing in on what is it shoppers are really doing online.

Below are some highlights from this year’s report.

  • 60% of respondents use social media to follow, discover, and give feedback on brands and retailers
  • But social media is not a major traffic driver to these brands and retailers -- just 10% of our survey sample said a social media interaction led them to a specific online store
  • 17% of online users don't buy online at all -- they simply prefer to shop in stores
  • When it comes to devices, our respondents overwhelmingly favor the PC to the tablet for online purchases -- 97% go shopping on a PC compared to just 28% on a tablet
  • Over the next 12 months, our sample expects to shop in-store and online via PC far more than they expect to shop online via tablet or online via smartphone
  • China is a different story in many ways; for example; 56% of Chinese online consumers have already been shopping via a social media platform, versus a global average of 24%
  • More than one in three of our respondents have shopped directly from a brand's website; in the U.S. (52%) and China (56%), more than one in two consumers have leapfrogged the retailer and shopped directly with a brand
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