Online Merchants, Shoppers to Deck the Halls Early

More than 38% of online retailers say they’ll start their holiday marketing earlier this year, to accommodate early-bird demand from shoppers, according to a study of the online holiday shopping mood from BizRate Research.

The annual eHoliday Mood Survey, conducted for shopping engine Shopzilla and online retail association Shop.org, polled 2,900 Web shoppers and 80 Internet retailers between Sept. 18 and Sept. 21 this year.

The study finds a seller community ready to get a major jump on the holidays. Almost two-thirds of online merchant respondents (62.5%) plan to begin promotions by Nov. 4, well in advance of the traditional post-Thanksgiving start to the shopping season. About 38.7% of retailers said they would offer early-shopper discounts this year — 12% for the first time.

The early holiday kickoff suits the plans of this year’s shoppers, the study found. Almost 20% of consumers surveyed said they plan to start their gift shopping earlier this year than last year; 34.9% said they will have started buying gifts by Halloween.

Merchants told surveyors they expect a strong end-of-year shopping season. One in five online retailers (20.5%) expects to see sales increase 75% or more over last year’s holiday period. Another 29.5% expect strong year over year growth of 30% to 74%, and 21-8% expect to see sales 15% to 29% higher than the 2005 cycle.

Other findings from the 2006 eHoliday Mood Survey:

* 83% of online retailers plan to offer free or discounted shipping promotions this year, compared to 64% who made the offer for the 2005 holidays.

* Almost one-third (30.6%) of the online sellers polled say they will offer first-time buyer discounts. For almost half of those, this will be the first time they’ve used that discount.

* 97.4% of merchants expect to incorporate search marketing into their campaigns this year.

* 73.1% said they will integrate their product feeds into comparison shopping engines.

* 41.6% of retailers plan to use blogs or RSS feeds as part of their marketing strategy this holiday, while 79.5% will take a stab at viral marketing through social networking sites.

* Traditional marketing won’t be ignored. Respondents said they would also spend for promotions in newspapers (44%), magazines (52%), radio (31.6%) and TV (26.3%).