Is Your Online Store Good or Bad for Business?

As if retailers did not have enough problems attracting consumers in a weak economic environment, a new research study from IHL Group says that retailers lose sales of at least one item to as many as 20% of consumers coming into their stores – leading many consumers to quit shopping with the retailer altogether.

Consumer Electronics stores are losing the most, with consumers saying that they leave the store without buying at least one item 21.2% of the time. Or put another way, these retailers are losing $1.35 for every customer that comes into their stores due to their level of out-of-stocks. Likewise, Warehouse Clubs lose $1.78 and Grocery stores lose $.68 in sales for every customer when consumers cannot buy that product or an adequate substitute.

“Retailers remain in denial when it comes to consumer’s perceptions of out-of-stocks,” says Greg Buzek, president of IHL Group, an analyst firm and consultancy that serves retailers and technology vendors. “Consumers don’t care why the product is not available. They come in with money to spend at the stores and have to leave either because the shelves are empty, there is no one to help get a locked item, or the staff simply cannot find the merchandise even though the computer system says they have it. Nine percent of all consumers in our study have simply stopped shopping at one or more retailers in the last 12 months due to the problem.”

Some key findings of the study include:

• Among Grocers, best in-stock performance is Safeway (14.7% of consumers experiencing out-of-stock of at least one item); worst are Food Lion and A&P (22.8%).
• For Home Improvement, the best performer is Ace Hardware (13.6%) which was slightly better than Lowe’s (14.1%). Worst performer in the category according to consumers is Menards, with 20.5% of their customers experiencing an out-of-stock of at least one item.
• For Consumer Electronics, Fry’s Electronics has the best in-stock position (13.1% percent of consumers experiencing out-of-stocks). OfficeMax is more than double this at 30.6%.
• Nearly one in 10 consumers of Sears/Kmart has stopped shopping their stores in the last year due to poor in-stock performance.
• Grocery customers leave stores not purchasing at least one item they planned to buy or a substitute product 16.6% of the time.
• Consumers aged 26-35 years of age experience out-of-stocks 11% more often than other age groups.

Tags: 501c3, accountants, Accounting, accounting services, ACH transactions, activities, amendment, apostille, assumed name, balance, banking, bill payment service, brad inman, business banking, business filings, business finance, business licenses, business services, c corp, CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS, CEO mobile service, certification of good standing, certified copy, certified public accountants, compliance services, consumers, conversion, corporate banking, corporate kit, corporate law, corporate services, corporation, CPA’s, DBA, dissolution, document, document retrieval, elawyering, eni number, entertainment business, fast incorporation, fast LLC, federal tax wires, financial findings, foreign qualification, form a business, Free LLC, getting a trademark, incfile, incorporate, incorporation, independent director, independent member, joel singer, lawsuit, legal document, legal issues, legal zoom, legalzoom, limited liability company, limited liability partnership, limited partnership, LLC, long beach, megan minich, merger, mobile banking, mobile version, name preservation, non-profit, non-profit companies, online banking, professional practice, registered, registered agent service, reinstatement, reporting information, residential brokerage, rocket lawyer, s corp, seal, secretary of state, service mark, small business tools, solutions, springing member, start an entertainment company, start your own company, stock designation, tax identification number, tax-exempt, tech tuesday, trademark, UCC filings, ucc search, users, Vcorp, vcorp services, wells fargo, wired for change

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 3:42 am and is filed under Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.