Here at Leapfrogg, we have a panel of more than 700 premium retail consumers that we engage with on a regular basis to help us understand customer needs and expectations from the brands and retailers they buy from.
Every month, we question them on a range of areas from buying behavious and brand opinion, to emotional purchase triggers and their recent shopping experiences.
The Insight Edit is our weekly bite size edit of the insight we gain from our panel in our search to truly understand the mind of the premium customer.
This week we are focussing on how our panel took advantage of the sales this year.
Surprisingly, only 10% said they took full advantage of the sales by buying multiple items with 73% spending the same or less than the year before.
44% said they bought a few items but a significant proportion of the panel (30%) bought nothing at all.
We looked at the differences in the way men and women approached sales and found a similar pattern with the only difference being that NO men bought multiple items, with a slightly higher percentage (60% compared to 45% of women) buying a few items.
We then assessed if income was a factor in whether our panel were shopping in the sales and found that it had no real effect on the patterns of behaviour. We can assume from this that no matter what income bracket you are in; there are similar proportions of people who like to shop for a bargain in comparison to those who are not prone to sale shopping.
Age did however seem to be more of a factor in sales purchases, with 0% of the panel more than 45 buying multiple items in the sale. Perhaps more mature shoppers know exactly what they want and are less likely to be swayed by a deal?
We then asked what particular items people were purchasing in the sales. As we expected the majority of purchases made within the sales period were for clothing (57%). The next highest category was home accessories (20%) with electrical goods next (14.4 %).
Perhaps unsurprisingly and conforming brilliantly to stereotype, is the fact that the category in which the highest proportion of men purchased were electrical goods and the category they purchase the least in being health and beauty.
Age and income seemed to have limited bearing on these categories with fashion, home accessories and electrical goods being popular across all age and income groups.
So our Insight Edit this week highlights no great surprises in the buying behaviours and categories for this year’s sales, apart from perhaps the fact that contrary to what the mass media might suggest, few of our premium panel are avid sales shoppers.
The lack of sale shopping this year may also be due to retailers feeling a “hangover” from Black Friday. Towards the end of November, many retailers were discounting heavily so consumers were able to snap up bargains before Christmas which according to IMRG figures is having a knock-on effect on January sales growth.
Therefore premium brands and retailers should focus on providing a great shopping experience in the run up to Christmas this year rather than rely on less profitable revenue generated by the post-Christmas sales period.
Next week our Insight Edit focuses on the aspects of the shopping experience our panel claim are the most important in generating customer and brand loyalty.