Consumers like greetings retailers – but the fun factor is crucial
Greeting card retailers are shown to be really engaging with consumers in the annual Retail Proposition Index Report from OC&C Strategy Consultants.
Unfortunately the researchers are holding Temu, the greeting card publishers’ nemesis for the sheer volume of copycat designs on offer, up as an example of how retailers should be using fun to “reinvigorate the retail experience they provide”!
Looking at what causes a shopper to pick one retailer over another, the analysis of consumer attitudes has Cardfactory, Waterstones, Funkypigeon, Moonpig, Oliver Bonas, and John Lewis spread across the top 10 in nine of the dozen categories, including Easy To Shop, Value For Money, Reliability, and Suited To Me.
For the report, 48,000 shoppers globally were asked how they rate the places they shop and what drives their decisions about where to buy, and the report concludes Fun To Shop is becoming increasingly crucial for consumer engagement, with retailers told to start prioritising fun shopping experiences to renew customer excitement and attract the younger generations.
Lush takes the top spot in the category, with an 83.8 shopper rating while Waterstones is fifth with 79.2 and a 78.0 score clinches 10th place for Oliver Bonas.
According to OC&C retail expert Luke Sparke-Rogstad: “Generation Z is leading this shift, being twice as likely as baby boomers to name ‘fun to shop’ as a reason to frequent a retailer. This trend applied across all surveyed geographies.”
He said the retail experience has lost its fun element, making retailers increasingly vulnerable to competition from leisure activities when it comes to discretionary spending adding that new retail disruptors like Chinese marketplaces Temu and Shein are “using fun to innovate their customers’ journey and should provide both offline and online retailers with inspiration and urgency to reinvigorate the retail experience they provide”.
Cardfactory comes top in Value For Money with a 85.7 score, and is also third for Low Prices at 84.2, where Temu – which should be outlawed for the sheer number of copycat designs – is at number one with 88.1 ahead of longer-established rival Shein at 86.1.
Easy To Shop has Amazon first with 86.0, Waterstones a close second at 84.7 followed by Moonpig third with 84.4, and Cardfactory’s 83.3 putting it in eighth place.
Waterstones tops the Suited To Me table at 83.8, above third-placed Moonpig (82.8), Cardfactory (80.3) in ninth, and Funkypigeon (80.2) 10th – and Waterstones and John Lewis are joint third in Product Quality with 87.1.
The book retailer also makes the Wide Choice Of Products list in 10th with 84.8), behind table-toppers Amazon (90.0), Temu (87.8) and Shein (87.1).
Department store John Lewis tops the Reliability and Customer Services lists at 84.7 and 83.1 respectively, as Waterstones comes sixth and eighth in each and Moonpig is classed as the seventh most reliable retailer.
More than 48,000 consumers globally were asked to rate the retailers they have shopped with on the strength of their overall proposition, and then to score the key elements such as price, range, service, etc, of that proposition.
These results are then used to compile a ranking of over 550 retailers from across the globe. Since the Retail Proposition Index was first launched in 2010, OC&C has analysed over 67million ratings to create tool to understand how shopper opinions and priorities have changed over time, and to identify the key long-run trends driving shifts in the retail landscape.
