Email, app top channels as US consumers plan majority of holiday shopping online

November 19, 2019

Millennial and Gen Z consumers plan to shop online for the holidays in overwhelming preference to bricks-and-mortar stores, per a new Leanplum study. Image credit: Leanplum

By Staff reports

Consumers are shunning bricks-and-mortar stores this holiday season, with more than 95 percent choosing to buy half or more of their gifts online, according to a new survey.

The study from multichannel engagement platform Leanplum showed that millennials and Gen Z U.S. consumers lead the shopping trend. More than 16 percent of those two generational cohorts are only shopping online this holiday season.

“As shopping habits shift online and away from brick-and-mortar stores, brands must adjust to communicate with their customers via mobile,” said Momchil Kyurkchiev, cofounder/CEO of San Francisco-based Leanplum, in a statement.

“Through our research, we see that it’s important that brands provide a personalized experience for each customer,” he said.

Leanplum surveyed 1,000 U.S. online shoppers last month for this study.

Getting personal
Personalized communication becomes even more critical as ecommerce and mobile shopping becoming the new norm.

More than 80 percent of respondents in the Leanplum study reported that they shopped on their mobile phones. This makes it key for brands to reach them at the right touch points.

Per the survey, three-quarters of shoppers find it useful to receive emails regarding deals and promotions.

Seventy-four percent of those surveyed said they were “excited” to receive notifications from retailers about offers and sales. Once they received notifications from a brand about a deal, almost 70 percent said they would check out the offer and likely buy the item.

That said, 75 percent of respondents said generic messages from retailers annoy or bother them. Consumers want to control when and how they want to receive messages from retailers.

Consumers reported sales as the primary reason they opened notifications from brands and retailers, per the survey.

Even respondents who earned $150,000 or more annually said they were open to receiving push notifications from retailers regarding sales, according to Leanplum.

Consumers prefer to receive discounts and deals from brands through email instead of print coupons.

Two-thirds of respondents to the survey said they open emails from brands they believed contained product deals or sales.

Among favorite shopping apps, Amazon’s won the vote of 82 percent of the respondents.

Apps and email seem to be the lingua franca of the younger generations for shopping.

THE SURVEY showed that 46 percent of respondents said they bought a product because it was shown in an app or email.

Fifty-two percent of the millennials and Gen Z consumers will shop on Cyber Monday and Black Friday compared to slightly more than a third of Gen Xers and baby boomers, according to the Leanplum survey.

Also two-thirds of respondents making $150,000 or more each year plan to do most of their holiday shopping online this year.

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Email, app top channels as US consumers plan majority of holiday shopping online

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