Private sale shoppers have some unique characteristics -- these customers visit private sale sites frequently and browse often. The sense of urgency, limited inventory, email reminders and thrill of the hunt have shoppers returning almost twice as often to private sale sites compared with high-end apparel sites. At the same time, these consumers comparison-shop heavily: they browse more often than luxury department store shoppers and convert less on private sale sites. As we detailed in our discussion of the rise of group buying sites, you should try to replicate the urgency of private sales sites by crafting limited-time offers.




In the chart below, you can see the amount of cross shopping between high-end apparel sites and private sales sites is growing. This means that shoppers are growing more and more likely to visit a high end retail site and then visit a private sale site. Cross shopping peaks during holiday for private sales -- perhaps because high-end retailers are offering strong holiday promotions and luring private sale shoppers to their sites.




So, what are the key takeaways? High-end retailers should increase post holiday presence to compete with the private sale peak shopping activity and private sale retailers should consider increasing their holiday presence to compete with peak shopping activity. And all retailers should determine how to best create excitement with their unique customer base.

Source: Compete/Google study, May 2010.

Posted by Heidi Spector, Google Retail Team