immediate future | Social Shopping: reaching the 50% that aren’t buying

“The key to social commerce is understanding the roles of the social consumer and the parts they play in the grand production of your marketplace.”[1]

By 2012, online retail sales in the UK are predicted to hit £44.9bn.

And social is changing the way we shop.

In 2007, Gartner identified two types of online shoppers: hunters and gatherers; those who shopped on price and those who researched products online before making their purchase decision.

Traditionally, online retailers have catered towards the hunters. They’ve recruited customers via search and retained them via email marketing. Price has often been the deciding factor: these customers have already decided what they want to buy.

In August 2010, immediate future surveyed 2,000 UK internet users. As a social media agency, it’s important to us that we really understand how people behave online.

We found that nearly 50% of consumers are still in the consideration phase. They haven’t yet reached the point in the purchase cycle where they know what they want.

We also found that there are new opportunities for retaining customers post purchase.

Social retail is fundamentally changing the way that consumers shop, and the relationship between customer and brand. It is creating new opportunities for interaction that open up the consideration phase; and different ways of keeping the relationship going beyond the initial sale.

On the 12^th of October, immediate future will be sharing the results of this research at the Internet Retailing Conference. We will reveal: