ShipStation report examines holiday season shopping preferences

A report issued this week by ShipStation, an Austin Texas, based provider of Web-based e-commerce shipping services, took a look at holiday season online shopping preferences, from both a consumer and merchant perspective.

The report, entitled “Holiday Shopping Trends 2023: Building a Risk-Resistant Ecommerce Strategy,” was conducted by Auctane, ShipStation’s parent company, and Retail Economics, an independent economics research consultancy, and based on feedback from more than 8,000 consumers and 2,000 merchants worldwide.

The ongoing push towards online shopping, which was accelerated through the pandemic, was evident in the report’s findings, with 60% of U.S. consumers, and 57% globally, indicating they plan to do most of their 2023 holiday shopping online, coupled with increasingly adopting omnichannel behaviors.

“E-commerce performance has fluctuated in recent years, Krish Iyer, Vice President, Strategic Partners & Industry Relations at Auctane, told LM. “Many businesses experienced unprecedented online shopping highs during the pandemic, followed by lows as stores reopened and spending temporarily reverted to physical channels. One reason consumers are shopping more online this year could be that they turn to online shopping to seamlessly compare prices across numerous brands and websites to maximize their savings. Cost-savings will be top of mind for consumers this holiday season, and online shopping gives them access to more choice and pricing.”

ShipStation’s findings also addressed the disparity between consumer expectations and merchant realities in regards to reverse logistics processes, which saw 8% of merchants contending that consumers want flexible returns. But that actual number is nearly doubled, as 15% of consumers indicated that flexible returns are considered “critically important to the online shopping experience.”

When asked about this disparity between consumer expectations and merchant realities, Iyer explained that merchants are highly aware that consumers are prioritizing savings this year with the caveat that they should remember that the holiday season is a high-stakes shopping period for consumers—marked by strict deadlines, and often, sentimental purchases.

“While the average consumer might have been willing to deprioritize premium shopping experiences, like flexible returns, in favor of low-cost or free shipping in the spring, that same consumer is more likely to reprioritize those perks during the holiday season,” he said. “When it comes to returns specifically, consumers that holiday shop online are often buying multiple sizes and colors of an item before committing to a gift—leading to more returns, and a heightened interest in seamless returns, during the holidays.”

Other notable findings in the report included:

• 90% of online shoppers expect an online purchase to arrive in no more than four days, without paying extra delivery costs and 72% of surveyed merchants deliver in four days or less;
• two out of five U.S. consumers are planning to start holiday shopping before October; and
• around one in every two online orders made over the holidays is expected to be through an online marketplace, with online marketplaces estimated to account for $253 billion worth of global sales during the holidays, with North America accounting for $183 billion

When assessing the biggest changes in online Peak Season and holiday shopping preferences over the last three-to-five years, Iyer said that consumers and merchants have navigated a turbulent few holiday seasons in recent years.

“In Peak Season 2020, we witnessed a surge in e-commerce adoption, as it became the sole avenue for consumer shopping,” he said. “This also came with a myriad of supply chain disruptions. Supply chain disruptions have eased since then (for the most part), but many of the shopping and delivery preferences that developed from the 2020 shift are still evident today, along with the added complication of a down economy. I’d say the biggest changes that started 3-5 years ago, that we’re now seeing come to fruition today, is an interest in exact-date-and-time deliveries (in simpler terms, it’s more important to be day and time accurate than early), a growing preference for shopping on online marketplaces over other channels (including in-store), and the proliferation of social commerce.”