The empowered shopper takes control

Every year IBM publishes a 'IBM Holiday Benchmark Report'. I haven't given it much notice in previous years, but this year I was intrigued by the captured statistics for shoppers referred from social networks which was a shuddering decrease of more than 35% from the previous year. This was a number that I thought would have grown from last year. My view had held that reference buying - consumers being highly influenced by the critique and referral of products and services by their peer or social circles - would see a steady climb. Perhaps I am interpreting this data incorrectly? Perhaps I should take sometime to digest this report a bit better. Here it is for your reading pleasure IBM 2012 Holiday Benchmark Report.

Here's a summary of the report:

• Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales on Thanksgiving grew by 17.4 percent followed by Black Friday where sales increased 20.7 percent over last year.
• Mobile Shopping: Mobile purchases soared with 24 percent of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer's site, up from 14.3 percent in 2011.  Mobile sales exceeded 16 percent, up from 9.8 percent in 2011.  
• The iPad Factor: The iPad generated more traffic than any other tablet or smart phone, reaching nearly 10 percent of online shopping. This was followed by iPhone at 8.7 percent and Android 5.5 percent. The iPad dominated tablet traffic at 88.3 percent followed by the Barnes and Noble Nook at 3.1 percent, Amazon Kindle at 2.4 percent and the Samsung Galaxy at 1.8 percent.
• Multiscreen Shopping: Consumers shopped in store, online and on mobile devices simultaneously to get the best bargains. Overall 58 percent of consumers used smartphones compared to 41 percent who used tablets to surf for bargains on Black Friday.
• The Savvy shopper: While consumers spent more overall, they shopped with greater frequency to take advantage of retailer deals and free shipping.  This led to a drop in average order value by 4.7 percent to $181.22.  In addition, the average number of items per order decreased 12 percent to 5.6.
• Social Media Sentiment Index: Shoppers expressed positive consumer sentiment on promotions, shipping and convenience as well as the retailers themselves at a three to one ratio.
• Social Sales: Shoppers referred from Social Networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube generated .34 percent of all online sales on Black Friday, a decrease of more than 35 percent from 2011.  

Oh! I quite like the iconographic of the shopping trends