Published on the 29/05/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
A major international survey of shoppers has found that Australians have apparently succumbed to “frugality fatigue” and are now expecting to spend more online in the coming year…
IBM’s fourth Smarter Consumer Study has found that almost half of all Australian shoppers are optimistic about the future, with 13 percent planning to spend more this year than they did last. Entertainment and travel spending were the likely big winners from the demise of the frugal shopper.
The survey also found an increasing willingness to spend online and the potential for more mobile online retail activity. Although only five percent of shoppers reported that their last purchase was online, of the 94 percent who still shopped in a bricks and mortar outlet, four percent planned to shift spending online in the future, 38 percent were undecided, while 58 percent remain wedded to the in-store experience.
According to Margy Osmond, CEO of the Australian National Retailers Association, said organisations understand that in the current market it is a case of “innovate or die”. Adding to the evidence for frugality fatigue, Osmond said that local retailers had the “strongest start to a calendar year for over a decade”, and that although the March figures were not that encouraging, she was hopeful retailers that would report a stronger April.
While retailers would have to innovate to survive, she lamented the lack of innovation from Government, saying that the changing face of retail meant there needed to be a rethink regarding issues such as labour penalty rates; the imposition of a goods and services tax on products under $1000 bought internationally; and importation regulations. “You could pay the same for a book here as for a book on Book Depository if the Government removed the parallel importing law,” she said.
One surprising statistic to emerge from the survey (which canvassed the opinions of 26,000 people worldwide – 1976 of whom were Australian) was that only one percent of Australian shoppers admitted to “showrooming” – where goods were viewed or tried on in a local store, before being bought, often more cheaply, online. Internationally six percent of respondents said they showroomed.
Osmond said that showrooming was more obvious in regional shopping centres around Australia where people were seen to be trying on shoes, for example, only to appear a week or two later wearing the same shoes, which had not been bought in the regional shoe-store, suggesting that they had been bought online after a try-before-you-buy session.
