After surveying more than 1,400 U.S. consumers, four key areas stood out where retailers should focus their attention this year:

* The integration of in-store and online experiences: Seven in 10 consumers would be willing to opt into in-store tracking and mobile push notifications if they were properly incentivized by retailers.

• An increasing significance of the supply chain: Over the past three years, seamless shipping, delivery and returns have become more and more important to consumers, making both primary future drivers of e-commerce growth. Today, free shipping continues to be the top incentive to drive more frequent online shoppers (88 percent), followed by one-day shipping (69 percent), free returns/exchanges (68 percent), and easier online returns (58 percent). 

• The rise of luxury e-commerce: Although a historically a clear laggard when it comes to online sales, the number of consumers who have purchased a luxury item online in the past year more than quadrupled from 2014.

• An ongoing lag in the adoption of mobile payments: Privacy and security concerns remain the primary reasons that consumers are hesitant to use mobile payment applications. This could explain why adoption has essentially remained flat year over year, with about a third of consumers having used these applications. That said, findings suggest peer-to-peer payment applications may be taking off faster than point-of-sale mobile applications, especially among younger generations, with 44 percent of respondents ages 18 to 25 having used a P2P app in the past year.

Source: Walker Sands