First Insight surveyed senior retail executives and consumers about holiday shopping preferences.
When it comes to shopping expectations, retail executives and consumers just don’t see eye to eye. A survey by First Insight Inc. revealed that retail industry executives are “not aligned with consumers on online and in-store shopping preferences, categories consumers plan to buy, and where they plan to buy,” the company said today.
The Pittsburgh-based predictive analytics firm said in its report that senior retail executives “are not keeping pace with the changing purchase behavior and preferences of consumers,” who are increasingly shopping online. The survey showed that while 59 percent of consumers polled “plan to shop online this holiday season, only 35 percent of senior retail executives believed consumers prefer to shop this way.”
“Additionally, only 41 percent of consumers plan to shop in a physical store, compared to a majority (59 percent) of retail executives who anticipate consumers will head in-store this holiday season,” the authors of the report noted.
Greg Petro, chief executive officer of First Insight, said the data shows “that the consumer has changed forever, but the industry doesn’t understand how much they’ve changed.”
at WWD
