Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Coupons are quickly growing as a significant component of beacon-enabled proximity marketing thanks to strong redemption rates, with brands and retailers forecast to deliver 1.6 billion coupons a year by 2020, according to a new report from Juniper Research.

The results point to how proximity marketing is gaining traction as retailers look to engage more deeply with consumers in and around their stores, prompting the volume of beacon-enabled coupons to grow quickly from the 11 million expected to be delivered in 2015. However, the research also underscores the potential danger of turning beacons into nothing more than another offer channel, which is likely to cause shoppers to lose interest....

As far as consumers are concerned, multichannel shopping is old news. And many find mobile screens too small -- and retailers’ m-commerce sites too clunky. They prefer to navigate e-commerce on their own rather than put up with less-than-ideal offerings from their favorite stores, according to a new survey from PwC U.S. Retail & Consumer practice.

The report, based on responses from 15,000 online shoppers around the world, concludes that retailers need to move beyond omnichannel thinking to meet consumers’ broadening expectations. And it notes that while shoppers are increasingly open to m-commerce, they’re also disenchanted. Some 37% of shoppers in the U.S. say security fears prevent them from shopping by phone, 33% say their screens are too small, and 32% say they don’t own smartphones. Many retailers would be better served by ditching m-commerce platforms, the report says, and focusing on what people do want....

Wal-Mart Stores said Tuesday that online sales broke company records, with more than 1.5 billion pages viewed on Walmart.com between Thanksgiving Day and Cyber Monday. The retailer said mobile sales accounted for about 70 percent of traffic to Walmart.com during the period.

Wal-Mart also said same-day pickups set records too, with orders up 70 percent from the same period last year.

But online sales across the board for retailers grew a smaller-than-expected 8 percent on Cyber Monday after web promotions before and during the Thanksgiving weekend robbed business from what has traditionally been the busiest day of the year for Internet shopping.

As of 6 p.m. EST Monday, data from IBM Digital Analytics Benchmark showed Cyber Monday sales grew sharply slower than comScore data over the weekend which showed a 32 percent rise in online orders on Thanksgiving and 26 percent on Black Friday.

Cyber Monday sales were projected to rise between 13-15 percent. The results highlight the waning importance of traditional shopping days like Cyber Monday and Black Friday, which until a few years ago kicked off the holiday shopping season....