The winter holidays are a special time of year for many people. For most of us, they’re a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with friends and enjoy some time away from work. But for consumers, the winter holidays bring promises of incredible deals and flash sales. These annual sales usually coincide perfectly with the gift-giving season, resulting in one of the largest annual influxes of sales. There have been a few emerging trends in consumer shopping behavior that we think businesses could take advantage of in 2022. Here is our list of five holiday shopping trends retailers should expect in 2022.
Early Holiday Shopping is no Longer an Anomaly
The COVID-19 pandemic and the couple of years of isolation stemming from it have had an interesting impact on consumer shopping behaviors. Gone are the days when holiday shoppers would wait in an hours-long line outside of a store hoping to find everything on their shopping list inside. This year we expect a lot of holiday shopping to be done over a longer period of time than usual. In fact, some studies have found that as much as 70% of holiday shoppers will start their search for gifts before Thanksgiving.
Many businesses have responded to this trend by starting their holiday sales earlier than in previous years. But a month-long sale isn’t feasible for every business. Instead, these businesses will have to find more creative ways of extending their holiday sales. For instance, businesses could separate sales they’re holding on different platforms to help them cover a larger part of the month. They could host an in-store sale on one week, a sale on their website the following week, and finally a sale on their social media business pages the week after that. This would triple the duration of your holiday sales without overextending the business.
The Rise of Omnichannel is Here to Stay
In the digital age, individuals can find the products they need through several different platforms. When a single company offers its products or services on a range of marketplaces, it is known as omnichannel retail. 2022 has shown that omnichannel retail is more than just a fad. The number of businesses adding their products to third party marketplaces like Facebook Business or Amazon continues to grow. The goal of omnichannel retail is to make your product as easy to find and purchase as possible. Offering your products through a few different channels will make it easier to grow your audience and serve more consumers.
Role of eCommerce and Mobile Commerce
At this point, eCommerce is an undeniable force in the retail industry. More and more consumers turn to the internet to buy just about anything under the sun. Online retail behemoths like Amazon continue to grow and find more success every year. However, in 2022 there is a new king of the retail industry.
Mobile commerce is becoming the most popular method of shopping, especially with younger audiences. Some studies have shown that mobile commerce sales accounted for more than 50% of the total eCommerce business done in 2021, making it a critical channel for retail success. This trend is only expected to continue in 2022 as more consumers turn to eCommerce apps on their mobile devices for the holiday season. If your company doesn’t offer a retail app for mobile devices, then you’ll need to focus on optimizing your website for mobile retail. The most important aspect of mobile retail optimization is responsive design. Responsive design allows your website to change its layout depending on the device being used to view it. This means that desktop users, laptop users, and mobile users will all see a version of the website tailored for that device.
Personalized Shopping Experiences
More consumers are showing a preference for personalized shopping experiences from eCommerce websites. A personalized shopping experience is a very simple concept that can actually be quite difficult to deliver. That’s because different demographics of the public will appreciate different shopping recommendations. Fortunately, there are a few tactics businesses can take to provide personalized shopping experiences ranging from simple and cheap to complicated and expensive.
The simplest method to give each customer a personalized shopping experience is through bundles. A bundle is a collection of related products that are sold for a combined price. The primary strength of bundles is that you don’t have to collect much data, if any at all, on your customers to begin offering a personalized shopping experience. That’s because it is generally pretty easy to determine what other products an individual might be interested in based on what they’re viewing. For instance, if someone is viewing a pair of running shoes, then you can safely assume they might also be interested in other athletic wear. No complicated coding or AI is necessary to make a great bundle.
A more robust method of providing individuals with a personalized shopping experience is via AI-powered recommendations. With artificial intelligence, you can track what products are generally purchased together and offer those same products to other customers. Many consumers have shown that they are more than willing to trade some of their personal data in exchange for a personalized experience. AI recommendations are incredibly effective, but also expensive and complicated to implement.
Eco-friendly Trends and Shipping Services
Consumers have gotten used to being able to have the products they ordered shipped to them with ease. And on top of that, many individuals expect to be able to choose their preferred
shipping services at checkout. Specifically, many environmentally conscious consumers are searching for online retailers that offer green shipping options. The amount of fuel burned by the delivery process is very harsh on the environment and many online shoppers are taking steps to lessen that impact.