February 28, 2005

Typical catalog shoppers were more apt to rely on Internet catalogs in online shopping outlets for the 2004 holiday season, as Millard Group finds fewer shoppers were prompted by a catalog or needed to have one in hand to shop online.

Millard Group surveyed 53 catalog retailers and over 70,000 of their online customers between October and December 2004 to learn that just 46% of respondents shopped online with the print copy of the company's catalog in hand, down from 59% in the 2003 holiday.

Furthermore, 75% of respondents said that receiving a catalog in the mail prompted them to shop at the retailer's Web site, down from 84% in 2003. Millard attributes these shifts to consumers becoming more Internet savvy and to the online catalogs becoming more robust in their offerings over the year.

Still, Millard notes online catalogs still have some work to do. Exactly 51% of shoppers were more satisfied with their online experience in 2004 compared to the previous year. Problems cited by more shoppers in 2004 than in 2003 generally revolved around technical issues — order processing, slow upload times or sites being down completely.

The only non-technical complaint cited by more Millard respondents in 2004 than in 2003 was items appearing in a print catalog but not online. A Nielsen//NetRatings study, commissioned by DoubleClick, on the other hand, found that 22% of online shoppers said they found holiday gifts online by first spotting them in a catalog. Only 20% said the same about seeing items in stores and just 15% said the same about TV commercials.

And a December 2004 Shop.org/BizRate.com study found that over one-half of US merchants said catalog mailings were their most successful offline marketing initiative to drive online holiday shopping traffic. Just 18% said the same about TV and 24% said the same about print ads.

Indeed, catalogers are wise to understand that print and online can work very well together, and that print is not yet extinct.

Source: eMarketer