With retailers expect bigger crowds than ever this holiday season, and with happy shoppers spending more, customer and employee satisfaction improvement service, HappyOrNot, is urging retailers to keep their shoppers smiling.
As much as 40 percent of the season's sales occur in the 10 days leading up to Christmas, according to the National Retail Federation, and the majority of these sales will occur on the top two biggest shopping days, Super Saturday (17th December) and Friday December 23, according to RetailNext.
HappyOrNot believes that when it comes to retail sales, the customer is king, and it pays for retailers to know how shopper satisfaction levels develop throughout the day on these peak trading days. The company has analysed its data of these two busiest days in 2014 and 2015, a total of 1.1 million retail consumer feedbacks, to identify the satisfaction trend and help retailers attain happier shoppers and higher sales.
Shopper satisfaction during peak shopping days
Super Saturday
The Saturday before Christmas, coined as 'Super Saturday', is emerging as the overall busiest shopping day of the holiday season. To ensure shoppers get the best in store experience, it's worth noting that shopper satisfaction drops on average 1 per cent every hour during standard open hours 9AM to 9PM and overall shopper satisfaction decreases nearly 11 per cent over the entire day.
December 23
Credited as the second busiest day, many shoppers are rushing to buy last minute gifts with little consideration of price. Like the Super Saturday trend, shopper satisfaction declines consistently throughout the day. The hourly results are only slightly better. Unlike Super Saturday, the trend plateaus after 3pm to maintain an 82.5 per cent average.
Tips to having happier shoppers (and more sales)
A SMG report stated that a happy shopper will spend up to 40 per cent more during each visit, and, TNS indicates that up to 30 per cent of shoppers will walk away from a purchase if they have a bad experience. To combat the unhappy shopper trend, HappyOrNot recommends that retailers prepare in the following ways: