‘Tis The Season For Smart Segmentation Of Holiday Shoppers

By Laura Albert, Marketing Data Analyst, CivicScience

The most wonderful time of the year for the retail industry is right around the corner. Retailers may already have visions of sales and customers dancing in their heads, but right now the holiday shopping season isn’t on many consumers’ minds.

According to The National Retail Federation, sales are expected to increase 4.1 percent from last year, to $616.9 billion during the 2014 holiday months of November and December. However, when it comes to marketing and promotional strategies, the timing of the offer to the right audience may be key.

CivicScience produced a recent holiday shopping report that segments consumers based on when they will begin their holiday shopping.  The research report shares demographic and psychographic profiles of the various shoppers, which can arm retailers with the insights needed to target and market to different shoppers this holiday season.

In a recent poll, CivicScience asked 9,229 consumers, 13 years of age and older the following question:

After filtering out consumers who do not plan to shop this year, 36% are last-minute shoppers, 26% are fall shoppers, 16% shop throughout the year, 17% are Thanksgiving shoppers and wait until the big sales start, and 5% of people shop early and have most of their shopping done before the end of summer.

The report focused on the three largest shopper segments, as described below:

• Fall shoppers = Those who answered: “I start shopping in the fall.”
• Thanksgiving shoppers = Those who answered: “I wait until the big sales start…”
• Last-minute shoppers = Those who answered: “I am a last-minute shopper within the weeks prior.”

A summary of each shopper segment is profiled, so that retailers can get a better idea of who is planning to shop when this holiday season:

Promotions running in the fall should be targeted more towards middle-aged and older women, since 72% of fall holiday shoppers are 35+ years old and over half (54%) are 45 or older. In this group, 62% have children or grandchildren for whom they will most likely be shopping, and when asked about shopping for the grandkids, 28% say they buy a few high-quality items they know their grandchildren want, while 21% enjoy spoiling them with a lot of gifts or money.

This group has a more difficult time spending their money than the other segments; 45% of fall shoppers consider themselves tightwads. They are also at least 18% more likely than the other groups to say they are diligent savers. So any sales, coupons or special promotions could be targeted to this group of shoppers, to potentially increase spending or at least foot traffic.

Fall shoppers are more influenced by TV ads than social media chatter; 51% say TV ads influence their purchasing behavior most (vs. Internet ads or social media content). About 52% of fall shoppers are on Facebook, which is less than the general population; however, they are slightly more likely to use Twitter. Advertising on Facebook may hit a larger percent of shoppers, but advertising on Twitter will hit a higher concentration of fall shoppers. Lastly, 51% say they are more likely than the other groups to watch the news each week, which may translate to a valuable advertising opportunity.

Marketing around Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday should also be focused slightly more on women than men. The majority (51%) of what we call “Thanksgiving shoppers” are 25-54 years old. Parental status is split between those with children and those without children. 39% have children but no grandchildren, and 39% are not parents. Thanksgiving shoppers are about 37% more likely than the general population and other groups to have school-aged children living with them.

Unlike fall shoppers, this group has a difficult time controlling their spending. In fact, Thanksgiving shoppers are 48% more likely than average to consider themselves spendthrifts. So this group may be making impulse purchases and potentially self-gifting while holiday shopping. Not only do they spend money more freely, they tend to be market mavens: the data shows they are more likely to be early adopters, tell others about new products, and follow fashion trends. They are 48% more likely than the general population to be very brand loyal and 35% more likely than average to always consult online reviews prior to making purchases. Having reviews easily accessible online and loyalty or rewards programs could prove to be beneficial for retailers.

Thanksgiving shoppers are not overly invested in social media. The social sharing platform they do enjoy using more than others is Instagram, which they use 33% more likely than the general population. Smartphones and tablets are slightly more popular among this group than the general population. Marketers may want to think about social media promotions that take advantage of the photo-sharing nature of these shoppers.

Last-minute promotions running the week or two before the holidays should be targeted to a different consumer. Men are more likely to start their shopping in the weeks prior to the holidays (probably not a surprise to retailers). Last-minute shoppers are more likely than the other groups to be 25-34 years old and are more likely than average to be 45-54. More last-minute shoppers are not parents.

Given the age and gender of the last-minute shopper, it’s interesting that they are 83% more likely to use Snapchat than the general population, since the majority of Snapchat users are women under 24 years old. Last-minute shoppers are at least 2X as likely to use Pinterest as the other groups. It could be beneficial to offer special promotions on platforms like Pinterest a week before the holidays. This group is also slightly more likely than average to be influenced by social media chatter, although half of the shoppers are still most influenced by TV ads.

When it comes to TV viewing behaviors, they are 2.5X as likely as the other shopping groups to watch online. Advertising on sites such as Hulu or YouTube has potential for success.

In summary, there are many ways to segment consumers around holiday shopping attributes – including product category spend intent, brand loyalty, socioeconomic factors, size of gift lists, and more. CivicScience’s report shares a view through the lens of “timing matters.” It’s important for retailers to keep in mind when different consumers plan to conduct their holiday shopping and devise well-wrapped strategies timed perfectly for those segments.

About the CivicScience Methodology:

CivicScience collects real-time consumer research data via polling applications that run on hundreds of U.S. publisher websites, cycling through thousands of active questions on any given day. CivicScience builds deep psychographic profiles of these anonymous respondents over time, providing valuable consumer sentiment data to the decision makers who care. The CivicScience methodology has been scientifically validated by a team of academic leaders and independent research firms. CivicScience currently has more than 27 million anonymous consumer profiles and 600 million responses stored, growing daily. For this report, CivicScience analyzed the data collected from 9,229 U.S.-based consumers weighted for U.S. census representativeness for gender and age (13 years and older), from August 18, 2014 to September 7, 2014.

Laura Albert is a marketing data analyst at CivicScience, where she helps with the collection and analysis of real-time consumer insights data. She works with CivicScience clients, business partners, and the news media. She can be reached at: lalbert@civicscience.com