Sun Releases Survey on Holiday Shopping Habits

According to a new survey on consumer shopping patterns this holiday season released today by Sun Microsystems, Inc. (sun.com), 91 percent of American consumers will walk out of a store and shop elsewhere if they cannot find the particular gift they want.

Adults online who plan to shop for gifts this season are equally unforgiving of online retailers that do not have the product they want when they want it-only four percent would buy a different gift on that same site.

Technical hitches on websites are also likely to result in lost revenue for retailers with only 35 percent of consumers indicating that they would come back and try later. The survey's findings confirm that retailers unable to meet consumer demand and deliver what they want, when they want it, may lose money to competitors. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive® on behalf of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

At a time of year when consumers spend the most, losing customers could translate to a worse year, overall, for that retailer. Sun Microsystems, which will have a presence at the National Retail Federation (NRF) event in January, believes that retailers who have made smarter technology investments in four key areas-lead time optimization, supply chain management, mark down optimization and labor force management-will likely have an advantage over their competitors this holiday season.

"Retailers who have not invested in smart processes and enough compute power to handle seasonal spikes in demand will feel enormous pain," said Mike Green, vice president, retail industry, Sun Microsystems.

Virtually all of American adults, 99 percent, who plan to shop for holiday gifts this year, would buy some of their presents at a brick and mortar store. Only 16 percent of those surveyed expect to do all of their seasonal shopping in stores, confirming the transformation in consumer shopping habits over the past decade.

53 percent plan to do up to half of their shopping online; 31 percent would purchase at least a quarter of their gifts at online stores. 37 percent plan to engage in up to half of their shopping through catalogues, television or on the phone.

60 percent of adults, who plan to shop for holiday gifts this season, would stroll into another physical retailer they cannot find the gift they want in a store, while another 31 percent would go online.

Only four percent of online adults, who plan to shop for holiday gifts this season, would buy a different gift at the same online retailer if they could not find the gift that they originally wanted; 51 percent would visit a different online retailer if they could not find their gift at their first option and 29 percent would opt for visiting a store.

Reinforcing how critical business continuity is, 42 percent of online adults planning to shop this season would visit another online retailer or a store if a website they visited was experiencing technical problems.

Only five percent would contact customer service as an alternative; 35 percent would try the site again later.

To meet the demands of sophisticated, impatient consumers with a number of retail options open to them, Sun believes there are four critical areas of focus for their retail customers-whether they are bricks and mortar or online.

In all of these areas, smart technology investment strategies are critical to bottom-line success: Lead time optimization makes sure that the right product is in the right store at the right time and eliminates stock-outs; Supply chain management helps ensure that the link from the sourcing of product; Mark down optimization focuses on the need to eliminate costly overstocked product.

Data were also weighted to reflect the total U.S. online adult population. In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95 percent certainty that the results have a statistical precision of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Harris Interactive Inc. (www.harrisinteractive.com), the 15th largest and fastest-growing market research firm in the world, is a Rochester, N.Y.-based global research company that blends premier strategic consulting with innovative and efficient methods of investigation, analysis and application.