As we emerge from the pandemic to a world that is much changed, people haven’t lost their appetite for in-store shopping. They’ve just taken a more modernized approach, combining digital and physical channels to suit their lifestyles—and that fact is the new north star for merchants.
The 2022 Global Digital Shopping Index U.S. Edition, a Cybersource and PYMNTS collaboration, draws from a six-nation survey of over 13,000 consumers and 3,100 businesses, where we find distinct new patterns taking hold with U.S. shoppers in meaningful ways.
The digital transformation brought on by the pandemic has changed behaviors in ways unique to each market. While highly disruptive in the early going, omnichannel is settling into grooves that consumers prefer, with one U.S. standout being online ordering and curbside pickup.
“Not only do 11% of U.S. consumers pick up their online orders on location,” the U.S. edition of the study found, “but 47% of those who do wind up making additional in-store purchases either often or every time they pick up an eCommerce purchase in-store. Among consumers in other countries, just 2.5% use curbside pickup options.”
Merchants with the right systems and processes in place to capitalize on this and other rapidly forming omnichannel preferences increasingly find investments paying off in higher average order values, app satisfaction, more in-store traffic, adding up to greater merchant loyalty.
Here are three key takeaways from the U.S. edition.
Curbside Convenience
Compared with other markets, U.S. consumers are taking to curbside pickup as no others, with 11% of all U.S. consumers picking up their most recent eCommerce purchases this way.
An interesting parallel is in-store pickup, with 12% of American consumers retrieving their most recent eCommerce purchases by walking into a store.
Finding reasons to encourage more to come inside leads to additional purchases, with 47% of respondents saying they buy other items either often or every time they pick up an online purchase in store, and 17% say they purchase other items when picking up their orders in store sometimes.
Seamless Seals the Deal
Compared with merchants in other global markets, U.S. merchants are proving to be masters of seamless and frictionless commerce, with an average Index score of 148, versus 101 across all nations studied.
While this advantage is clearest in mobile channels, where index scores are nearly 158 in the U.S., the brick-and-mortar index score of 75.5 indicates work still to be done on in-store payments, especially when considering the additional purchases customers make when they opt for in-store pickup.
Additionally, U.S. merchants rank high on easy dispute resolution, data security, and returns.
Lagging in Mobile Experience
As much as U.S. merchants are achieving enviable index scores in other critical areas, the region is behind in some important aspects of mobile shopping—and they’re trying to close those gaps fast.
This takes the form of mobile experiences that enable consumers to do anything from make a recommendation to access product information on their smartphone as they shop.
According to the Global Digital Shopping Index U.S. Edition, American merchants “lag in offering both. They are also behind the curve in promising to price-match competitors,” with data finding that 46% of U.S. merchants give digital access to recommendations digitally and 56% vow to price-match competitors.
On average, 52% of the five nations studied allow shoppers to access product recommendations via mobile, and 64% promise to price-match competitors, by comparison.