Free Shipping Holds Value, Survey Finds

When preparing their next offers, multichannel marketers may want to take a second look at the value of free shipping. Its appeal to consumers appears to be growing. Such was the finding of the seventh annual Post-Holiday Customer Insight survey conducted by Decision Direct Research, the marketing research division of the list company the Millard Group. Of the 73,000 consumers who completed the recent survey, 61 percent said free shipping spurred them to shop from catalogs, and 53 percent indicated free shipping was the driving force in getting them to shop on a Web site. Here are some more noteworthy findings of the survey:

* 47 percent said their online purchases were for themselves, up considerably from four years ago (24 percent);

* 21 percent said they were buying gifts for both themselves and others, down from 40 percent in 2003;

* overall gift purchases decreased from 36 percent in 2003 to 32 percent in 2007; this means consumers are going to certain sites for themselves and different sites for others;

* 12 percent of the respondents purchased gift cards last year, down significantly from the previous two years (59 percent both years);

* 49 percent shopped a particular cataloger’s Web site with a copy of that cataloger’s book in-hand, down 11 percent from five years ago; and

* 56 percent did comparison shopping before placing their orders online.

For more information, go to www.millard.com .