How Zara Grew Into the World’s Largest Fashion Retailer

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?smid=li-share&_r=0

Are you where your customers are? New data from Europe

Our annual global survey of consumer habits online was recently completed. This entry is focused on Europe. Future ones will share insights on Asia, Africa and South America - so stay tuned. Here are some stats and points that particularly interested me
Consumers have already gone digital when shopping for products in categories such as consumer electronics and mobile/digital goods. Some 60 percent of consumers report that they research these products online before buying, and nearly half make more than 25 percent of their purchases online. But product categories such as furniture, clothing, and footwear – once classic offline domains – are now also being researched and purchased in the digital space. This trend is expected to continue.
The number of consumers who use their computers to conduct online research within certain purchase categories has already seen a significant rise from 41 percent in 2010 to 50 percent in 2012. In that same time period, the number of consumers using mobile devices for product research has nearly doubled – from 12 to 21 percent. Both means of information retrieval are especially popular among consumers shopping for mobile phones. Nearly every second consumer searches for information online and approximately one-third of them conduct mobile device-based research before purchasing a new mobile phone.
There are, however, still great differences between the European countries. The Netherlands is in front with 55 percent of Dutch consumers conducting computer-based research for a mobile phone and 43 percent using mobile devices to gather pre-purchase information. On the other end, only 33 percent of Polish consumers perform computer-based research for a mobile phone and only 9 percent of French shoppers use their mobile device for that purpose.
A major new disruption for retailers combines traditional and digital research – the in-store use of mobile devices. More than 20 percent of consumers already use mobile phones for product research across all categories, and 40 percent of them do it in store, primarily to consult professional reviews and price comparison sites.
If they hope to capture the resulting growth opportunity, companies in all industries will need to ensure that they offer their goods through the right channels so that consumers can easily and quickly find what they are looking for.
You can get the full report here: "Mobile is growing fast. Are you ready?".
Learn more on our Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site. And follow me on Twitter (@joshleibowitz) so we can carry on the conversation.
[Photo: antwerpenR, Flickr]