Is consumer loyalty to regional retailers impacting your retail ecommerce results?

Nearly 50% of retail sales now take place at regional retailers.

This percentage may not be as surprising today as it would have been three years ago, but even before the pandemic many consumers (82%) preferred to stay close to home and support smaller, regional businesses when possible.

Amidst the height of the pandemic, when consumers were forced to take safety - and often financial - precautions, 70% stated they continued to support local businesses by shopping online only or via click-and-collect. From 2016 to 2021, small retailers saw an average revenue growth of 51.33%

Some of the habits established during the pandemic aren’t going away, including consumers’ desire to use click-and-collect services. While curbside options were initially implemented out of necessity, they’ve now become a preferable and convenient way for shoppers to buy from nearby brick and mortar businesses. One-third of US shoppers hope to continue ordering online through their local retailers and collecting items in-store.

So, what are the main drivers behind the continued consumer preference to shop and support regional businesses?‍

1. ‍Keeping money local: 57% of Americans state that their main reason for shopping at smaller nearby retailers is to keep money in their community.
2. Loyalty: 72% of US adults belong to at least one shopper loyalty program. Two-thirds of these loyalty programs come from local grocery and drugstores.

As a brand, meeting your customer where they shop - especially at the regional level - is crucial for capturing repeat purchases and continued scale.
‍

Creating paths-to-purchase at regional retailers

The modern consumer has made it clear that locality is an important factor in their shopper journey, and brands enabling these regional paths-to-purchase through retail ecommerce see positive benefits as a result:‍

1. ‍Greater brand and availability awareness. Connecting shoppable media to landing pages or store locators with location-based where-to-buy options not only informs more customers of where they can purchase products, it validates the product. Consumers place a lot of trust in their favorite retailers. When they see new products available at their preferred stores, oftentimes it increases their willingness to purchase.
   ‍‍
2. Increased trial. Sending traffic to regional retailers allows brands to tap into an audience that might prefer to try a product once before committing to larger purchases. Trial opportunities are more likely to happen through a retailer where a customer already has an account or was already planning to purchase other items. Assuming they enjoy the product, this single purchase can turn into bulk or repeat purchases.
   ‍‍
3. Minimized competition risk. By pointing customers directly to the regional retailers stocking their products, brands eliminate opportunities for competitors to disrupt the funnel and distract or capture their shoppers.

The benefits seem obvious, but many brands still encounter blockers when attempting to support these regional purchase paths. Why?‍

1. ‍Lack of reliable shoppability. On their own, brands can’t reliably connect shoppers to every retailers’ ecomm cart. Fragmented and regional distribution makes it nearly impossible to manage and track inventory, which introduces the risk of sending customers to out-of-stock links.
   
   Even when implementing shoppable tools to help manage the ecomm path to retail, many rely on POS data that is 2+ weeks old at best.
   ‍‍
2. Unknown performance and unactionable data. Once a shopper clicks off of an ad, brands lose insight into what happens on the retailer’s ecommerce site.
   
   Purchases become unattributable, they can no longer see how their ads are doing, and they can’t utilize modern performance marketing techniques to optimize or scale these regional sales (e.g. A/B tests, retargeting, lookalikes, etc.).
   ‍

Until now.

Pear Commerce is the only retail ecommerce platform that supports retailers down to the regional level with a personalized path to purchase.

With Pear, brands can connect any UPC to 3,000+ retailers, unlocking real-time inventory scanning so shoppers never hit dead links or out-of-stocks. Pear’s actionable store locator, landing pages, direct to cart links, and shoppable widgets connect to any available retailer in a shopper’s area, only displaying the store locations where products are actively in-stock and purchasable.

Pear partners with retailers to enable brands to access and leverage real-time, full-funnel, attributable data tied to purchase events. Our platform returns actionable insights into campaign performance, giving brands the ability to measure, then optimize, ROAS. Each transaction is tied to a conversion event, fueling performance marketing.

Ready to unlock retail ecommerce capabilities down to the local level? Schedule a demo with our team! →

‍