Companies are prepared for inflation and changes in customer spending, starting campaigns earlier – extended discount period increased parcel volumes by 15.3% in October
To ease the toll on the wallet, people are dividing spending on Christmas present over multiple months
The trend shows how the shopping holidays peaks are declining as the stability trend is rising, showing that people don’t want to leave Christmas shopping at the last minute
The seamless omnichannel solutions help companies to increase their revenue
Over the past few years, shopping habits have changed drastically. The online shopping boom started with the lockdown. This year is starting to show another kind of behavioral pattern – the parcel volume curve starts rising in October, not in November as it has been for decades. What initiates this change? Let's break this trend down and find out how companies can gain from it.
The parcel volumes will be rising during the holidays, as usual, but this year people are dividing the expenditures over the course of three months from October to December. This change of trend showed its first signs last year, in 2021, but even stronger this year. Salesforce research indicates that 42% more shoppers worldwide plan gift shopping earlier than in previous years. Also, companies plan their holiday campaigns earlier. There are many reasons for that. First of all, inflation has hit the economy – people are looking for bargains. Customers' solvency has decreased, therefore people look over their spendings and start holiday preparations sooner. Customer spending has decreased by 6% in Q3, which is an indication to be continued in 2022 Q4. Secondly, companies are making discounts for more extended periods to avoid out-of-stock situations on shopping holidays. A longer period discount allows the companies to divide workload more effectively while gaining more profit.
Steps to Maximize the revenue
The pandemic supported the e-commerce boom in shopping – lockdown measures directed people to buy goods online. After the lockdown, online shopping volumes made corrections but as the trend shows, people are more used to buying presents online. The popularity of e-commerce is steadily increasing. Adobe is predicting a 2.5% growth in online sales during 2022 November-December.
The predictions show that the volume of parcel delivery flow is stabilizing over the Q4 months as people are starting the preparations for holidays sooner. Technology company Cleveron, which has many large retailers in their portfolio, is monitoring the parcel volumes that go through their click-and-collect solutions. The company’s statistics show that October’s volume rose 15.3% compared to last year’s October volumes. Probably one reason for that is as companies start discount periods before Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Companies that own digital, as well as physical stores, are in an advanced situation. The reason behind the growth of e-commerce is the effectiveness of offering the best deals for customers. There are three options for how to hand over an item to the customer:
- The customer will order the item online and it will be delivered to the doorstep
- The customer will order the item online and will receive the package via in-store click-and-collect
- The customer makes sure that the desired item is available in-store and buys the item on the spot
The last two options are the most beneficial for the company. Why so? It allows to maximize company’s revenue. When a customer enters the store to pick up the parcel, the chances are high that they will find another desired item, and will make an extra purchase in-store. Because of that, it is essential to offer a seamless omnichannel experience that guides the customer effortlessly from looking for items online to purchasing in-store. In addition to revenue gain, it helps to raise the NPS score.
It may sound frightening to direct online order pickup to the store, especially during the holiday season. But luckily there is a solution for that bottleneck – automating parcel pick-up points. Automating every aspect of online order pickup it will free store associates time as they would only have to insert the parcels in the parcel robot. Also, customers don’t have to wait in line to receive their order; from a parcel locker, they can get their parcels within 10 seconds. Latin America's leading retailer Falabella and the world’s largest fashion retailer Inditex are already using robotic pickup solutions in-store. According to eMarketer retail e-commerce, holiday season sales will increase by 12% compared to the prior year – it is a promising possibility to create more traffic in the store.
The changes in customer spending are mainly affected by inflation, earlier preparation to avoid stock shortages, and dividing the holiday expenses over multiple months. Companies have taken action in rapid behavioral changes and started shopping holiday campaigns earlier. This helps stores to even out the workload more effectively and plan resources better. The significance of omnichannel implementation is making standard procedures effective for store associates as well as clients. In-store pickup enhances the possibility of customers purchasing more items as coming to pick up orders and create traffic in the store. The prognosis shows that the peaks of shopping holidays are declining as the overall parcel volume is rising, giving a straight signal that stability and foreplanning are this year’s key indicators.
About Cleveron
Cleveron is an Estonian tech company and the world’s innovation leader in creating robotic parcel solutions to automate last-mile click and collect. In addition to continuously developing hardware and software, Cleveron provides training, and support as well as remote and on-site maintenance to our clients worldwide. With the help of Cleveron's solutions, companies reduce last-mile delivery costs, streamline parcel delivery and return operations and improve the omnichannel customer experience. Cleveron's drive is to help people save time by creating innovative parcel robots and APMs that eliminate repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks from people's lives. Cleveron's parcel lockers and robots handle nearly 20 million parcels globally each year, from our native Estonia to Peru and Saudi Arabia.