May You Live in Pinterest-ing Times: Social Media and Holiday Shopping

Introduction

Consider your customers’ social media and holiday shopping habits as the holiday season approaches. You may have been pondering these matters even before the last 4th of July sparkler was lit. We’re just past Labor Day, and it’s already the right time.

Changing Shopping Behaviors

But interesting information reveals that your customers’ habits and shopping behaviors continue to change with the social media landscape around them. We’ve written before about “showrooming,” that shoppers’ tendency to view an item in the “real world” — a store — then to start surfing on their mobile device for a better price.

The Rise of Reverse Showrooming

Now comes word that some social media sites — led by picture-pinning Pinterest — may be causing a kind of “reverse showrooming.” As a report on Business Insider recently stated, “data distributed by Vision Critical, and highlighted in the Harvard Business Review found that 21% of Pinterest users had bought an item in a store after pinning, repinning, or liking the item on the site

The Impact of Social Media

“Vision Critical describes this as part of a wider phenomenon it calls ‘reverse showrooming,’ in which consumers search or browse products online and then enter the physical shop to make a final purchase.”

Pinterest, it would seem, whets consumer appetites for certain products so sharply, that customers simply have to have whatever “it” is, and head out to get one.

The Role of Recommendations

The article further explains that, unlike showrooming, which e-commerce giants like Amazon and eBay drive, reverse showrooming finds its roots in social media and social commerce. In the case of reverse showrooming, friends’ and strangers’ recommendations actively inspire shoppers’ purchase decisions, both offline and online.

Further, retailing chain Nordstrom  “is testing displays that highlight Pinterest-trending items on in-store displays.” They are, in other words, trying to make “reverse showrooming” as easy as possible on their customers.

The Omnichannel Approach

As a report from eMarketer noted, about customer behavior heading into the holiday season, “With online and mobile now omnipresent in consumers’ shopping behavior, the key to creating a seamless customer experience and driving sales is reaching shoppers on any device or at any location, increasing inventory and pricing transparency and providing more fulfillment options than ever before.”