It’s that time of year again… chestnuts are roasting, tinsel is flowing, and shopping lists are growing!
Retailers everywhere are preparing for holiday shoppers – decorating their stores, stocking their shelves, and promoting their holiday specials. But that is just not enough anymore. In a world of industry giants, like Amazon (who alone attracts over 50% of holiday shoppers*), smaller retailers have to get creative in order to compete for their business.
Fortunately, we’ve done the research for you, so you can get better prepared to meet your holiday shoppers’ needs.
*Splitit and Google Consumer Surveys did a study to help retailers get better prepared to meet shoppers’ needs. The survey (based on a representative sample of over 1,000 respondents from the United States aged 18-65+) focused on how shoppers are planning to spend their money this season, what their biggest stressors are, and what types of incentives are most interesting to them.
Budget Concerns Heading Into the Holidays
First and foremost, there’s a strong sentiment of financial anxiety amongst shoppers leading up to the winter holidays. 42% of consumers are concerned about going over their budget. Retailers need to take this into account and appeal to this issue if they hope to win their business.
The highest ranking worries for holiday shoppers include: fitting their holiday spending around their household budgets, privacy concerns, and extra costs (like shipping). Other headaches include bad return policies, and the inability to try items before purchasing.
First of all, let’s address the obvious solution to one of shoppers’ key worries. Securing your checkout process and keeping your security measures updated on your website is pertinent, no matter what. Younger generations are not as worried about sharing their information online, most likely due to having grown up during the rise of digitization, and are less fearful. But 18% of shoppers over 35 ranked privacy and identity theft or fraud as their biggest worry. Solution…secure your checkout process.
Since you are most likely already tuned in on the security front, let’s focus on the other stressors your shoppers are dealing with.
Providing Financially Lucrative Solutions
While 54% said they plan on shopping on Amazon for the holidays, 42% plan on taking their business to Mom and Pops. But retailers, big and small, still need to be able to provide financially lucrative incentives to their shoppers in order to close their sales.
Our research found that, even though budgets are tight, 22% of consumers would be encouraged to spend more money overall if they had the option to use flexible payment methods. These include options such as ‘buy now, pay later’ solutions and monthly installment payment plans.
Almost 50% of consumers would be encouraged to spend more this holiday season if free shipping were available and 43% would spend more if offered a 10% discount. Another 8% of consumers already plan to make purchases using flexible payment options and 18% said they would consider taking advantage of these options if they were available.
Gen Zers in particular are a good audience for these alternative payment options, with 17% of 18-24 year olds reporting the inability to try on items before purchase as their biggest shopping worry. These payment solutions offer consumers the ability to control their cash flow, mitigate any debt issues, and give local merchants a fighting chance.
Splitit as a Solution
Retailers everywhere are trying to keep up with the changing needs of their consumers. Flexible payments are on the rise and the demand is only growing. It’s pertinent to provide a shopping experience that is smooth and simple, because, to put it frankly, attention spans are not exactly what they used to be. Splitit understood that, and developed a solution that meets both retailers’ and shoppers’ needs.
Splitit has the only global installment payment solution available, offering installment payment solutions, deferred payment plans, and seamless integration with online checkout processes. Shoppers have immediate access to flexible payments that do not charge any additional interest or fees, without having to go through an application process. It is all connected to their existing credit card. Retailers are able to provide shoppers with alternative payment options, which has proven to increase sales and average order values and decrease cart abandonment rates. It’s a win-win solution!
Integrating Splitit today may just be your golden ticket to a successful holiday season.