Ahead of a busy upcoming holiday spending season, Kellie Fitzgerald, managing director of retail at Google, took the stage at the WWD Apparel & Retail CEO Summit to discuss the power of resilience amongst shoppers and break down the consumer mindset.
With 99,000 searches made on Google every second the tech corporation has had more than 15 percent of never-searched-before daily searches, which Fitzgerald said can be attributed to the evolving impact of culture as new trends, movies and more shape the landscape. Content creators, for example, continue to be disruptors across social media, making them incredibly powerful. Notably, while 14 million viewers watched the Met Gala livestream, content creators such as Luke Meagher of HauteLeMode contributed to the more than 550 million viewers talking about the event.
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Discussing the summit’s theme of resilience and disruption, Fitzgerald said consumers have reported that they are feeling less confident now with 63 percent of U.S. consumers finding that the right purchase takes more effort than it used to.
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“We’re faced with overwhelming numbers of choices,” said Fitzgerald. “We’re dealing with some decision fatigue. We’re worried in this economy about making the wrong decision [and] can’t afford to make the wrong decision. This is actually causing a greater abandonment of purchases.”
Fitzgerald said consumer confidence can be boosted by taking into account consumers’ propensity to require category knowledge, information and prior brand relationships. Notably, it’s been proven that when shoppers are more competent, it positively impacts a business’ other major metrics.
“In a span of just 10 years, e-commerce has gone from being this little fraction of holiday sales to being a predictive 25 percent of this year’s holiday sales,” Fitzgerald said, speaking to the power of consumer confidence. “And this change has created a whole new set of shopper expectations, especially around speed and availability.”
However, these consumer woes have not changed retail’s enduring strength. Shopping continually follows predictable patterns, with spending picking up during Black Friday and Cyber Monday and 20 percent of all holiday spending occurring two weeks before Christmas. Consumers have also reported that they intend to spend the same or more as compared to last year.
When shoppers are confident at the point of purchase, they are 10 times more likely to be “very satisfied” with their purchase and six times more likely to “definitely buy again” than those who have lower confidence.
“While the trends and types of gifts that we give to children has evolved and changed quite a bit over the years, shopping and gifting around this time of year is cemented into our culture,” said Fitzgerald. “This is a shopping pattern and rhythm that we can feel confident about.”
Fitzgerald broke out the holiday consumer mindset into four key categories as deliberate (consumers who shop during October and November), deal-seeking (consumers who shop during Amazon Prime Day, Black Friday and Cyber weekend), determined (consumers who shop during December) and devoted (consumers who shop post-season). While every consumer may take on a different mindset depending on who they are shopping for, each holds an opportunity for retailers to build confidence with its shoppers.
“Retail is resilient,” said Fitzgerald. “It’s been proven over and over again.”