Shopping Cart Abandonment, A Consumer’s Advantage?
I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine discussing the opportunities of shopping on the Internet. Okay, in reality we were discussing how the economy has affected consumer buying patterns and what we were really after is finding the best bargains. My friend shared with me something that I had not heard of before but in turn seems to work, much to my amazement, a strategy that I never thought to employ.
My friend is a shopper that I would consider to be a cost sensitive purchaser, one that is always looking for the best price on an item that she is interested in. This leads to a tactic she recently deployed and believe it or not has to do with shopping cart abandonment.
During our conversation she shared with me that she has on several occasions, put items in shopping carts of various websites that she would like to purchase from. Typically these are items that she wants but is in no hurry to purchase right away. She then abandons the shopping cart if the item is at regular price and/or there isn’t a discount readily available. I kept thinking why would you do this? Well it turns out that many companies want to turn the abandoned cart into a sale, so my friend plays the waiting game. Eventually she receives an email from the business letting her know that they have noticed her shopping cart was abandoned and if she would like to purchase the item. Now here is the interesting part, to capture the sale the business usually attaches an incentive, either a discount or free shipping offer if she completes the transaction. With the discount in hand she usually makes the purchase.
Wow, I would have never thought of this as a consumer buying strategy to get the best deal but my hat is off to her as a savvy shopper looking for a discount. If this becomes a wide spread practice, how will this affect your profitability? Let me know your thoughts.
Tocky Lawrence is a Vice President with F. Curtis Barry & Company, a multichannel operations and fulfillment consulting firm with expertise in multichannel systems, warehouse, call center, inventory, and benchmarking; learn more online at: http://www.fcbco.com.
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