Consumer shifts in how and where people buy products evolved significantly during Covid creating new opportunities for retailers with more people shopping online than in-person.
A report from digital payment and ecommerce platforms, PayPal and BigCommerce, highlight a growing need for retailers to invest in a omnichannel sales and marketing strategy that provide a convenient and consistent shopping experiences in-store, online and on social media.
It won’t be a surprise to know that the global pandemic has seen Australian’s change their shopping habits with 53.3% doing more of their shopping online than in-person. While significant, the figure is less than the global average of 62.5%. And, despite 29.7% of Australians preferring to shop in-store, they believe the benefits of online shopping outweigh the trade-offs.
Digital wallets, like Apple Pay and Google Pay are the preferred payment method in-store and online, a trend that has grown significantly since pre-pandemic. Prior to March 2020, 34.9% of Australians preferred to use digital wallets for online payment but since then the number has increased to 42.3%.
For in-store shopping, the use of digital wallets has jumped too, sitting at 9% before March 2020 and growing to 21.6% since then.
And Australian shoppers lead the way when it comes to Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) adoption, with 15.5% using the payment system five or more times in the last three months, compared to 10.1% globally while 1% have used BNPL 10 or more times in the past three months, compared to just 4.3% globally.
As customers continue to move away from brick-and-mortar stores to digital commerce and increasingly use their phones to make purchases, an omnichannel strategy opens the opportunity for retailers to reevaluate their sales and marketing strategies to ensure they are meeting customers where they are the most likely to spend.
“For years, we’ve seen ecommerce continue to gain ground on traditional shopping as online and digitised experiences have required retailers to quickly adapt to changing consumer shopping behaviours,” PayPal vice president for global pay later products, Greg Lisiewski said.
“Consumers want to be in control of how they pay, and have a desire for friction-free, seamless digital shopping experiences regardless of which channel they are shopping in.”