What you need to know about multi-channel shoppers

Multi-channel shoppers are fast becoming all shoppers.

As buying online becomes a mainstream activity amongst internet users (currently at 78.5% in the US - see eMarketer) and as the world of 'internet users' gets closer to 'everybody' (85% of UK adults earning more than £20,800 accessed the internet in the 3 months preceeding April 2006 - see ONS, and 79% of all connections are broadband - see ONS), multi-channel shoppers are increasingly the same group as shoppers.

The ONS reports that the most frequent online activity is 'searching for information about goods and services' - carried out by 84% of adult internet users. Yet only 44% of adults had bought online in the 3 months preceeding the April 2006 survey.

This shows (if you didn't know already) that there is an immense amount of online shopping research going on though much of it results in real world buying.

What does this mean? Success in retail will depend on creating informative and up-to-date websites to empower consumers to get the answers they want. All of them!