A few days ago, online coupon site Retailmenot.com released results from its inaugural holiday edition Shoppers Trend Report. A combination of consumer trend data pulled from activity on Retailmenot.com and a survey by Ipsos regarding near-term consumer sentiments, the report corroborates much of what Forrester recently predicted for this year’s holiday shopping season:

• Growth in overall retail spend will be positive but small. According to the Shoppers Trend Report, only 11% of consumers surveyed intend to increase their holiday spending.  Similarly, the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Forrester predict the U.S. will see only a marginal increase of 2.8% growth in overall retail spending this holiday season. 
• Coupon use is on the rise. 58% of US online adults say that they are more price-conscious today than they were a year ago.  Not surprisingly, Experian Hitwise has seen downstream traffic from retailers to couponing sites grow 69% in the last three years. Similarly, Retailmenot.com has seen online coupon usage increase 23% in the months leading up to the holiday season.  Seems if there’s a deal lurking out there on the internet, price conscious consumers are out to find it.
• Free shipping is preferred by online shoppers. 59%of US online adults say that they shop online more often with retailers that offer free shipping.  In fact, according to the Shoppers Trend Report, free shipping is the coupon promotional offer most favored by consumers – preferred by 26% of all shoppers.

Back in September, I wrote up a few of my findings from meetings with companies in the eCommerce space in Rio and São Paulo. We’re fielding an increasing number of questions about Brazil, and indeed, while eCommerce in Brazil today is still heavily dominated by local companies, the landscape is starting to include more international players:

• Global eBusinesses are increasingly making Brazil a priority. One of the trends we called out in our global eCommerce predictions for 2011 was that Brazil would be a key market this year for eBusinesses expanding internationally. Momentum is building: Last summer, Sony launched a new online gaming store in Brazil, and Netflix entered the country. Even Amazon took a step into the market a few weeks ago when Amazon Web Services launched its first edge location in South America in São Paulo. European companies, too, are focusing on Brazil – Germany’s Rocket Internet, for example, incubates eCommerce start-ups in Brazil such as fashion website Dafiti which launched earlier this year.

Forrester’s “US Online Holiday Retail Forecast, 2011” launches today, revealing strong growth despite a shaky economy.  November and December alone are expected to pull in nearly 60 billion dollars in online revenue, a 15% increase over 2010 and about one-third of overall online sales volume for the year.  Much of the growth comes as a result of web shoppers doing more of their holiday shopping online and is enhanced by:

• Customers hunting down deals.  The web has always been the channel for finding value, but as shoppers are more likely to have their smartphones in hand, and as the US unemployment rates continues to approach a double-digit percent, expect even more browsing online for great values.  Deal-related keyword searches spike around the holidays and many opportunistic customers actually look to load up on products from their own personal wishlists given the ubiquitous availability of offers. 
• Key dates getting bigger.   The trend for the last several years has been that Cybermonday is the biggest shopping day of the year for web retailers.  This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as retailers now provide rich sales and offers on those dates, further driving customers to expect fabulous values at the same time.

A year ago, Forrester fielded our Q3 2010 Global Mobile Maturity Online Survey. We interviewed more than 200 executives in charge of their companies’ mobile strategies around the globe (40% in the US, 40% in Europe, and 20% in the rest of the world). You can see the results from last year’s survey here.

To help consumer product strategists and executives benchmark and mature their mobile consumer strategies, we’re updating this survey.

Planning and organizing for the use of mobile technologies is a complex task. Some players are laggards and think they still need to get the basics of their online presence right, while others are clearly ahead of the curve. Yet two questions we consistently hear are: “Where is my organization compared with others in the use of mobile?” and “How can we mature our mobile consumer approach?”

Here’s how you can help:

If you’re in charge of your company's mobile consumer initiative or if you’re familiar with it, then please take this survey.

Click here to start the questionnaire. 

If you’re not familiar with your company’s mobile consumer approach, please forward this survey to the relevant colleagues who are in charge of defining or implementing your mobile consumer approach. 

• The survey takes less than 20 minutes to complete.
• The survey will be live until November 20.
• Responses will be kept strictly confidential and published only in an aggregated and anonymous manner.
• For your efforts, we will share a free copy of the survey results.