As promised in my article a few weeks back, I’ll be sharing some data sporadically over this holiday season from one of the most ambitious research projects we’ve ever taken on. Data which has, for the most part, remained unseen in the public domain until now. Just about this time last year we partnered up with PayPal to find out what’s really going on in retail stores during the holidays. We surveyed 400 retailers before Black Friday weekend, and then more than 8,000 consumers mid-shopping season to get the results. Both groups were divided equally from 8 global regions (US, Canada, UK, Australia, Russia, Brazil, Germany and Japan), and the goal was to find out how well retailers’ expectations match up with consumers’ actual shopping experiences.

We called the project “Consumers vs. Retailers All Over The World, ” and here’s a perfect example of how that title came to be. Figure 1 shows what retailers think their consumers will do when lines invariably become long this holiday season.

Figure 1

German retailers are most convinced that consumers will stay in long lines, while Australian & Brazilian retailers are most worried about comparison shopping while standing in line. US retailers are ranked third for worrying about comparison shopping on mobile phones while waiting in line, but consumers’ reports are that few have done anything to mitigate those lines in the first place.

The truth of the matter, in fact, is that consumers everywhere are getting antsy, as evidenced by their constant search for the shortest line possible. We think it’s only a matter of time before the mobile devices they’re playing with in line start getting used for more than texting/social media. Note that as of now, more consumers are likely to outright abandon a store altogether than they are to use their phone to try to find an alternative/similar product (Figure 2).

Figure 2

So when will consumers actually leave a store? From retailers’ perspective, it’s almost a non-event (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Most retailers think that less than 5% of shoppers leave stores due to long lines. When in reality, even though cultural differences do apply, the percentage of customers who report leaving a store due to long lines drastically upsets retailers’ perception in every region of the world. For example, 58% of US consumers abandoned a store last year due to long lines – 38% of them more than once (Figure 4).

Figure 4

Consumers vs. Retailers, indeed.

We’ll be off next week in recognition of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US, but I’ll have one more data set to share when we return on December 9^th. Happy Thanksgiving to all of our US-based readers!