Amazon best for personalisation

Just over a third ( 34%) of retailers thought that brand reputation was the most important factor when consumers choose a retailer with just 2% citing personalised shopping experience as an important factor. However, 31% of consumers said they would be more likely to make purchases if they were offered personalised experiences such as product recommendations or tailored content and 85% said brand reputation was not an important factor.

Raj De Datta, co-founder and CEO of BloomReach said: “There is clearly a gap between what UK consumers are looking for in an online experience and what UK retail brands think consumers are looking for. Amazon has raised the bar in customer experience and the challenge is for retailers across the world to try to match that. The good news is that consumers are more open to competitor brands, placing little value in brand reputation but a lot of importance in the experience. Marketers need to recognise that brand reputation is not as important as they think it is and focus more on improving customer experience.”

The 2014 Consumer and Marketer Personalisation Study from BloomReach was conducted by RedShift Research and sampled 1,000 UK consumers and 122 UK online retailers.

Amazon also topped a separate customer experience poll, the eChannel Retail Benchmark study conducted by eDigitalResearch, due to its “core multichannel functionality, especially across the search and purchase sections of the customer journey”. The online retailer was closely followed in the ranking by department store Debenhams.

According to the report, consumers particularly liked Amazon’s “accurate and fast predictive text on keyword search, extensive integrated customer reviews on product pages and their one-click purchase functionality”.

“Amazon have long led the field with their multichannel customer experience, introducing ideas such as predictive search text and one-click purchases,” said Derek Eccleston, commercial director at eDigitalResearch. “While they still don’t lead the way when it comes to design or first impressions, Amazon clearly understand their customers – they know that people are often wanting to make purchase quickly and their digital channels more than deliver on this front.”

In addition, BloomReach has launched in the UK.