Wize Blog

Are you a savvy shopper?

Do you hear what I hear? It's the sound of retail managers everywhere quietly closing their office doors and curling into the fetal position as "A Patsy Cline Christmas" plays on continuous loop. What's the cause of this ulcer-inducing holiday stress? Mandatory "family time" with the in-laws? Existential angst? Too much Patsy? Maybe, but the more likely cause is the growing number of savvy shoppers out there this holiday season.

American consumers expect, on average, to spend 17% more on gifts this year than last. So why are smarter, savvier, wealthier shoppers a cause for such angst among retailers? Consider the reasons that consumers dislike holiday shopping:

Waiting in lines (32%)
Finding the right selection of gifts for everyone on my list (26%)
Lack of time to get it all done (19%)
Trying to stay in budget (12%)
Finding parking at shopping centers (10%)

To avoid these hassles savvy holiday shoppers are turning to the Internet to research and purchase their gifts. Consumers find online shopping to be an attractive alternative to forging through the holiday scrum at retail outlets and malls. Shrewd shoppers see the advantages to shopping online as: lower prices (20%); better product selection (9%); more flexible (33%); and more convenient (34%) than shopping offline. Even the game of deal-chicken retailers habitually employ the week before Christmas can now be considered almost quaint as shoppers learn that they can find those deals (or even better ones) on the Internet. It's no wonder that the majority of Americans plan to purchase at least half of their holiday gifts online this year.

Does this spell the end of traditional retail? Hardly, but it does force offline retailers to rethink their approach to the holiday shopping season. Shopping online gives consumers the ability and the information they need to choose the store that's cheapest, easiest, provides the widest selection, and is the most convenient. With the help of comparison-shopping, or product review sites like Wize, consumers save themselves energy, time and money. It's time for offline retailers to realize that a "successful" holiday shopping experience is more than ensuring a customer goes home with a purchase. It's about creating an environment and an experience that gives customers the personal satisfaction of knowing they didn't have to elbow a senior citizen in the ribs to find the best gift at the best possible price.

* Data used to write this blog came from the "Holiday 2006 Shopping Trends Consumer Behavior Report"

Consumer ratings and reviews influence active web shoppers

According to Forrester research from October 2006, more active web shoppers have used “consumer ratings and reviews” than any other content. This is closely followed by “for-sale listings with seller ratings,” most likely found on eBay. According to our own research, active web shoppers tend to start their product research at Google or eBay, filtering results until they feel that they’ve found the right product, price, and store.

With the vast amount of content available online, it’s fascinating to think of consumer ratings and reviews as being the most critical. There are multiple reasons for this, including:

Consumer ratings and reviews humanize our purchases, and are more easily understood than product specifications. Endless lists of product features can be mind-numbingly boring, and difficult to understand. Consumer reviews and ratings help people understand how a product works in the context of real life. They are often filled with emotional responses to products, which are both helpful and compelling. I bought the Canon PowerShot not because of its 6.2 megapixels, but because of what those megapixels help me to do.

Active web shoppers are distrustful of ads and corporate messaging. Want to find the best flat panel TV? Don’t ask Sony – they’ll probably recommend their own without doing a whole lot of competitive analysis. Customers have become increasingly distrustful of ads and sponsored product reviews and ratings. When making a purchase decision, they’re more likely to trust each other – in the form of user ratings and reviews – than any single source.

Many services are popping up online to help customers understand and use customer reviews to help make purchases decisions. Wize is uniquely positioned because of the way we factor user ratings and reviews into our Wize Rank rating system.

Our Unlikely Competitors

Americans spend more than $2 billion dollars year to store unused things. Another $39 billion is spent each year on garbage disposal.

It would be fascinating to hire an ethnographer to go inside self-storage lockers with renters to learn how their things ended up locked away. Certainly there would be stories of sentimental heirlooms that must be kept. But among these mountains of unused stuff, we suspect there are many products that simply didn’t work out — and rather than admitting failure, it’s likely that the owners simply stored the bad memories out of sight.

Moving forward in time, imagine what archeologists will think a thousand years from now as they dig though our trash pits, finding smiling Chia Pets, mounds of Mr. Coffee makers, and bizarre cordless phones by the bushel basket. What will our trash tell them?

At Wize.com, we want to put a dent in the self-storage and garbage disposal industries. If everyone used WizeRank to research products, we think there would be a little less demand for self-storage and trash hauling. Certainly the buyers of these products would be happier with their purchases.

Buying bad products is more than a waste of time, waste of money, and waste of emotional energy. Buying bad products creates ambiguous junk and garbage. Watch out self-storage and garbage industries! Wize guys have your number.