Infographic: Is online driving even greater shopper promotional buying?

For the first time, the unique Shopper Intelligence database can produce a robust and thorough comparison of how shoppers approach an online shopping “trip” compared to a physical store.

This data (see infographic) compares ‘000s of traditional supermarket visits with Amazon and Walmart.com purchase occasions. We can look at this category by category, retailer by retailer, but here we take a “top-down” view.

The thing that strikes me most about this is the enormous impact of promotions in the online shop. This could be a short-term effect as the online stores fight to win new baskets, but perhaps it’s yet another step into training the shopper to “wait for a deal” or “switch on price”, a behaviour we can see growing across all channels. Yes, online retailers are running big promotions to get trials, but are they also using their capabilities to make it even easier to buy a discounted brand rather than a full price one?

Is that good for the long-term health of the Industry? We can look at whether this is better or worse in your categories.

Download the infographic here.