Holiday shoppers favor online shopping, with Amazon becoming the preferred channel

As the highlight of the year's sales, the holiday shopping season has always been the focus of major retailers and cross-border sellers. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in Europe and the United States, online shopping remains the first choice for consumers during this holiday shopping season.

Recently, digital experience intelligence company FullStory conducted a survey of 1,600 American consumers. The results showed that holiday consumers prefer online shopping, and Amazon has become their preferred shopping channel.

The survey shows that 80% of respondents said they will search for gifts on Amazon this holiday, followed closely by some retailer websites, and then Google. In addition, more than one in ten respondents said they will look for gifts on Facebook or Instagram.

Respondents are generally more satisfied with online shopping than offline shopping. More than half of the respondents believe that offline stores often run out of stock of the goods they want; half of the respondents believe that store staff do not provide adequate assistance to them when shopping offline; and 49% are concerned about the lack of epidemic prevention measures in physical stores.

In contrast, respondents rated online shopping much more highly, with 88% saying the online shopping experience was as good or better than before the COVID-19 pandemic; nearly a third said the online shopping experience had improved, with only 12% saying it had gotten worse.

Three in ten respondents said that platform or shopping cart failures during the holiday season are more frustrating than at any other time of the year. During the holiday shopping period, the most common frustrations consumers experience include shopping carts that cannot complete transactions, pages that fail to load, timeouts, or send site errors. More than half of the respondents said that if the shopping experience in a store is very bad, they are unlikely to shop at this store again.

When asked about improvements to holiday shopping, 66% of respondents want retailers to show them similar items in stock; 60% want merchants to mark out-of-stock items in advance, 51% want merchants to notify them when the items are available again, and 43% want out-of-stock items to be removed from promotions and search results in a timely manner.

Overall, consumers will buy more goods online this holiday shopping season. Product shortages and shipping delays will become an inevitable reality this holiday season, and sellers should prepare in advance to improve consumers' online shopping experience.

E-commerce

Amazon

Holiday Shopping Season