Discounts and mobile devices accelerate consumers’ shift to online shopping

A major shift from brick and mortar to online shopping is taking place in the major consumer markets, and jewelry companies are trying to get in on the action, offering steep discounts to customers on their e-commerce websites.
In the United States, consumers set new records for online sales this year across Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Bounceback Tuesday, marking a 15.7 percent year on year increase in transactions compared to online holiday sales last year.
At the same time, traditional sales venues were finding the going tougher, with brick and mortar store sales down 5 percent on Black Friday, compared to the same day in 2015.
Last, brick-and-mortar Black Friday sales in the United States fell by $1 billion.
In the jewelry sector, retailers both in the United States and Asia were offering deep discounts on jewelry for Cyber Week, in an attempt to attract shoppers via their ecommerce sites. Many believe that the reluctance to conclude a sale virtually is higher with valuable luxury items like jewelry. Kay Jewelers, a U.S. subsidiary of Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest jewelry chain, offered discounts of 30 to 50 percent off select “gifts of love” on its online site, and Zales, another Signet brand, reduced prices up to 50 percent on more than 600 items for Cyber Monday. Online diamond retailer Blue Nile took 50 percent off fine jewelry for Cyber Monday. Similar offerings were reported in the Chinese and Hong Kong markets.
Significantly, on Black Friday, 53 percent of visitors browsed products on mobile devices, according to Criteo, a performance marketing technology company.  But while consumers survey the market in their phones, they prefer to close the deal on their computers back home.  Desktops still exceeded mobile in actual conversion, with 62 percent of purchases occurring on desktop compared to 38 percent on mobile.   "Mastering smartphone e-commerce continues to be a top priority for online retailers," said Jaysen Gillespie, Head of Data Science and Analytics at Criteo. "Not only are record numbers of users now transacting directly on smartphones but these users are also leveraging the smartphone to research transactions that ultimately materialize later on other devices."  

Article provided by: DFI- Alternative Wealth Solutions