The Forgetful Holiday Shopper

Apparently, Christmas shoppers aren’t checking their lists twice.

Nearly 56 million adult online Americans (i.e., who use the internet) are likely to forget to buy a gift for their mail carriers and nearly 44 million are likely to forget to buy a gift for their neighbors, according to the Last-Minute Shopping survey from CashStar, a provider of digital gifting. Other people most often forgotten include the people entrusted with childcare, such as teachers and babysitters, as well as their co-workers.

The survey also found that despite the throngs of early shoppers around Black Friday and Cyber Monday, a quarter of online Americans only remember to buy a gift in the days leading up to an event, with nearly 10 million remembering on the day of the occasion.

"These results reflect how hectic our schedules are, especially during the holidays," said David Stone, co-founder and CEO of CashStar. "Despite our best intentions, we forget important people. Fortunately, technology is again helping to make our lives easier, now in the form of eGift Cards, which can be delivered in an instant from any computer, tablet or smartphone."

Other findings from the survey:

  • Men were twice as likely to forget a gift until the day of an event compared to women;
  • Eight million online adult Americans admitted to forgetting a holiday gift for their parents;
  • When it comes to gifting, 36 million online Americans confessed to forgetting their bosses, while only 26 million bosses forgot their employees;
  • Nearly 20 million online Americans said that they forgot the babysitter and nearly 26 million forgot their child’s teacher.

 

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

What should retailers do to help forgetful or last-minute holiday shoppers? Should there be a bigger focus around reminder messages? How does marketing to the last-minute/forgetful shopper differ from the average holiday shopper?

Poll

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Kenneth Leung
Kenneth Leung
11 years ago

Amazon does a good job with their wish list built into the user interface. For other retailers it can be a combination of web and mobile applications that allow shoppers to scan items for purchase later or put together address book linkages.

Another thing is just merchandising and product placements to support last minute shoppers on a budget. At the end of the day, sometimes people are just buying things on budget.

Kevin Graff
Kevin Graff
11 years ago

One of the best, and easiest, add-ons is a gift card. We always recommend this strategy to our clients. The idea is to suggest the gift card as the last add on … in case they forgot to buy a gift for someone (nice to have the study back this up!).

You could also hand out blueberries to help your customers with their memories! 🙂

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
11 years ago

Impulse signing in the stores and online can easily fulfill the need for reminders. I don’t think this is a huge challenge for CPG Brands nor retailers. It is simply not executed ubiquitously.

Mark Price
Mark Price
11 years ago

The fact that consumers tend to be forgetful represents an opportunity for retailers who have products that can be delivered in real-time, or next day.

Retailers should take advantage of the past purchase history, and leverage that information to provide reminders to shoppers so that they can repeat past purchase behavior. In addition, retailers should permit shoppers to design their own reminders, which will lead to a higher response rate and a greater sense of relationship with the company.

Alison Chaltas
Alison Chaltas
11 years ago

If Walmart can pull off their same-day delivery test on December 23rd, this game is totally changed.

For now, click & collect is the best path to solving for last minute gifts. Order online, have a “guarantee” the product is in-stock and put aside for the purchaser, then a quick drive through the store or kiosk to pick it up. In the past, only Nordstrom would try such an effort. Now most of the mass market big boxes can pull it off with 90% accuracy. The challenge is improving customer service to avoid alienating that last 10%.

Phil Rubin
Phil Rubin
11 years ago

There are a number of ways that retailers can be helpful in terms of last-minute holiday gifts. Platforms such as CashStar’s can be highly valuable, allowing last minute, digital delivery of gift cards.

There are also increasingly larger opportunities to leverage a gift recipient’s social graph to suggest gifts, as well as other social commerce platforms. Clearly the Facebook news about its gifting platform will be a major impact here, and of course, Amazon is always the retail leader when it comes to making it easy to transact.

Jerry Gelsomino
Jerry Gelsomino
11 years ago

NRF should begin an advertising campaign on behalf of all retail to remember ‘those left off your gift list’.

Kai Clarke
Kai Clarke
11 years ago

This article is clearly not a good indicator of what people are forgetting or why when they buy holiday gifts. Forgetting to purchase a gift for your mail carrier is one thing, but your daughter, husband or wife is another.

Chandan Agarwala
Chandan Agarwala
11 years ago

The marketing needs to be customized, and it need not look like eavesdropping onto someone’s privacy. With permission, retailers can track the social graph for important gifting occasions. Package offerings can be developed with complete services for gift counseling, to online payment to gift delivery. Customers may be willing to pay a premium for last-minute shopping, being afraid to annoy a dear one.