Online Shoppers Remain Wary By Michael Pastore Fears that online merchants will not have desirable items in stock or will deliver too late for the holidays will force a majority of online holiday shoppers to spend less than 10 percent of their holiday budget online, according to research by Jupiter Communications , but America Online Internet says shoppers will spend more in 1999. Jupiter's research found that many of the 20 million holiday shoppers it expects online in 1999 will favor merchants they bought from in the past. Jupiter polled more than 1,300 US online shoppers in late November and found the majority will act conservatively when it comes to allotting money for online shopping.
Consumers are risk averse to gambling with the success of their holiday shopping.
Familiarity with the retailer has everything to do with whether a consumer will buy, Jupiter found. Fifty-one percent of the respondents indicated that site recognition and trust are leading determinants in selecting online merchants to buy from. Thirty-nine percent said they would buy from online merchants whose stores or catalogs they had bought from offline. Their greatest challenge is living up to expectations that consumers have toward their brands. Nailing the basics, such as site performance, inventory, fulfillment management, and customer service becomes more crucial than ever.