California Apparel News

Social shopping took a sharp decline in this year’s second quarter, according to a recent report released by IBM.

“It’s shocking, especially given the media buzz [over social media],” said Jay Henderson, IBM’s strategy programdirector.

The report analyzed 500 U.S. retailers from Aprilthrough June of this year.

Social shopping is defined as purchases initiated by click-throughs from a social-media site, such as Twitter orFacebook, versus using social media simply for marketing orconsumer engagement.

According to the report, retailers saw more than a 20 percentdecline in sales traced to social media over the threemonth period in comparison with this year’s first quarter.

“Generally, there’s been a lot of buzz about social and you hear about it like it’s this giant thing, and then you see the performance and it’s not in line with that inflated sense of expectations,” Henderson said.

Marketers are in an experimental phase with social media and are unsure of how to harness it to increase revenue, according to an IBM 2012 marketing survey.

“We still believe that channel has a lot of promise. The potential is still great, but there’s some short-term refactoring that marketers are going through,” Henderson explained.

Retailers such as Patagonia say they have found success with social media as a marketing and brand-awareness tool, but the outdoor retailer has never attempted couponing or discounting through this channel, according to Dmitri Siegel, Patagonia’svice president of e-commerce.

Resort and lifestyle brand Tommy Bahama uses Facebook,Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube primarily to share marketing videos, product and lifestyle information, “fit videos” and footage from photo shoots to engage with its customers.

“We don’t get that many sales from social media; it’s more of an engagement tool,” said Lisa Atwood, Tommy Bahama’s senior vice president of e-commerce. “There’s a lot of our guests that want to interact with us since we’re a lifestyle brand, so we have drink recipes, food recipes…”

The company has been creating more social-media content over the last year and a half and has seen an increase in customer engagement that mirrors what has been going on in their online channel and retail, Atwood said, but she doesn’t see it as a direct sales tool.

“People are on Facebook to be entertained and to interact with each other, not to shop,” she explained. “They go into a store or on their mobile device to shop.”

Upscale retailer Ron Robinson uses Facebook, Twitter and other channels to tweet and blog about in-store events, product launches and new clothing shipments, which has led to an increase in sales for both the store and the website, said Karen Meena, Ron Robinson’s vice president of buying and merchandising, but the company has yet to venture into using social media for promotions or contests.

“Brands will find the right way to communicate,” Henderson said. “We’re still seeing quite a bit of experimentation and less certainty as to what exact campaigns will look like, but we have a high degree of confidence that they will experiment and find the answer.”

Henderson said he also attributes the second-quarter drop in social-media sales to “a post-holiday lull.”

“Marketers were very zealous during the holiday season and promotions were held over into the first quarter, but in the second quarter, marketers pulled back some of their promotions,”he said.

Marketers are still trying to find the right set of campaigns tobe running through social-media channels, Henderson said.

Good news for mobile

On the flip side, mobile retail sales continue to increase, with retailers experiencing a 14 percent growth in sales from mobile devices in the second quarter of 2012 in comparison with the first quarter and a nearly 89 percent increase when compared with the second quarter of last year, according to IBM’s report.

“For a bunch of years, everyone’s been talking about it being ‘the year of mobile,’ and 2012 marks the fourth year of announcing ‘the year of mobile,’” Henderson said. “The difference this year is that it’s graduating from an emerging [sales] method to the standard, which can largely be attributed to consumer adoption of smartphones.”

The mobile trend will continue, and IBM is projecting mobile commerce will double this holiday season in comparison with last year’s and that it will represent more than 20 percent of all online purchases.

“It’s a medium that needs to be taken seriously,” he said.

According to a study released by Google on Aug. 10, more than one in five apparel consumers use their tablets or mobile phones to shop on a daily basis, and people who search online using a mobile device purchase more than non-mobile shoppers and spend more per average order. The study also stated that mobile users shop throughout the day, not just while “on the go.”

“There’s this notion of couch commerce instead of being tethered to desktop computers,” Henderson said.

Tommy Bahama said its retail sales have reflected a significant spike in mobile users.

“Last holiday saw our traffic for mobile increase a lot,” Atwood said. “Basically, about 24 percent of our visitors came from a mobile device.”

Sales coming from the iPad, in particular, have proven popular for the retailer.

“This year, 90 percent of our [holiday] mobile traffic came from an iPad, and the rest was iPhone,” she said.

Patagonia has also seen a large growth in sales from tablet users, so the company has currently focused its efforts on adapting its website for tablets instead of mobile phones, Patagonia’s Siegel said.

An upcoming trend is the digitization and further integration of in-store experiences and mobile experiences, according to Henderson. Retailers will harness mobile devices for clientelling, QR codes, product information and display units in the store, as well as continue to use mobile devices as point-of-sale tools.