We are all aware of cross-channel commerce (or, as some call it, omnichannel shopping), and the implications this new customer journey has for brands. Consumers use several channels to shop and obtain information before purchasing, therefore, the whole experience needs to be seamless and the information provided relevant at the time and appropriate for the channel used.
Social content is becoming ever more important in the car purchase journey, with over 80% of buyers consulting driver reviews before some or all vehicle purchases.
That's why dealerships like Luscombe Suzuki and Simpsons Škoda are keen to add social commerce solutions like ours to their sites. Unlike quotes from one or two carefully-chosen testimonials, real owner reviews provide trustworthy information that boost engagements and increase the rate at which website visitors convert into test-drives – and into sales.
New research into how UK consumers book their holidays reveals a startling shift away from bricks-and-mortar travel agents and towards online research and booking.
The general trend towards online will be no surprise to anyone in the industry, but the extend to which people have already abandoned the high street may be a surprise: 53% of consumers avoid in-store travel agents altogether during booking process 72% of consumers prefer to research holidays online
The rise of consumer ‘decision support services’ is transforming the way a huge variety of markets work, according to Ctrl-Shift. We’re inclined to believe them, since the Ctrl-Shift team includes some of the sharpest minds we know for identifying market trends, and their report on these ‘decision support services’ chimes exactly with the developments we’re seeing.
New technologies and new shopping habits mean car buyers are now driving their own purchase process – and, from what we heard at this year’s AM Digital Dealer conference, the impact on automotive businesses is huge.
The industry-specific conference highlighted the importance of having a well-rounded online strategy to help with the car buyer purchase journey, to ensure that the final purchase is one of your models or from one of your dealerships.
The travel industry has been centre stage this week at ITB Berlin – the world’s biggest travel trade show, and one of the best predictors of upcoming trends in the industry. Here are the best bets for what’ll be shaping the travel market in the next few months and years, based on what we heard from attendees and speakers at the event.
For businesses and consumers, customer service is more important than ever. But, while you’d be hard put to find a business that disagrees, many businesses struggle to make a firm connection between the effort they put into service and its impact on their bottom line.
Whether businesses are ready for it or not, m-commerce looks set to hit the mainstream in 2012.
As part of the research for our new ebook, we dug into the latest research on consumer usage of mobiles as research and/or shopping tools. We were expecting to see usage increasing – but we were surprised by just how fast m-commerce is growing.
Here are some of the highlights, based on trends for the last six months:
One of the fundamental principles of social commerce – in whatever form – is that it only works for businesses if it works for consumers.
Reviews, recommendations and other social commerce tools are only able to increase revenue for businesses because they’re helpful for consumers, giving them more information and more confidence in a vendor or product. And this can only happen if these social tools are carefully designed to work well for consumers, offer the right features and be as easy to use as possible.
We recently started collecting reviews and social content in our 18th country. With thousands of reviews collected every week across our network, in more than a dozen languages, we’re well placed to observe some interesting trends in international review culture.
We’ve already looked at which nationalities tend to turn the air blue when they’re unhappy with a purchase. But useful insights can be drawn from a much simpler analysis: how long are reviews across Europe?