In today’s tangle of commerce channels and payment methods, merchants can rely on loyal customers to take trusted paths, whereas deal-chasers tend to go wherever the bargains are.
While these are very different mindsets, merchants must cater to both, a reality that makes the checkout experience critical in either case. We examine this dynamic in the study At The Checkout: Deal-Chasers Versus Loyal Customers, a PYMNTS and Checkout.com collaboration, asking over 2,000 U.S. consumers about the factors that most influence their decisions at the “buy” moment.
Giving a sense of how checkout experience impacts the consumer psyche, the study states that “for 76% of loyal customers, a satisfying checkout experience influences their decisions on whether to purchase again from a given merchant. This share is noticeably higher than what we observe for persuadable consumers, at 64%, and deal-chasers, at 63%, though the impact of a positive checkout journey is also very high among these groups.
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As to where we find loyal customers and deal-chasers, they’re often in the same places, but not for the same reasons. Also factoring in are “persuadable consumers” that walk a middle line.
The study found that “deal-chasers and loyal customers alike do most of their online shopping in three channels: online marketplaces, brands’ official digital stores, and merchants’ digital stores. Online marketplaces dominate, with 44% of deal-seekers and 40% of persuadable and loyal consumers using these channels for their most recent online transactions, respectively.”
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An important finding here is that “deal-chasers may be the least loyal shoppers, but they are the highest spenders,” with the research showing that deal-chasers spent $564 on average during their most recent online shopping session, “far more than loyal shoppers and persuadable consumers, whose latest purchases averaged $393 and $187, respectively.”
How these different personas like to pay is another important consideration, especially when part of the mission is converting high-spending deal-chasers into loyal customers.
Per the study, “Merchants must also be sure to offer their target customers’ preferred payment methods. In this area, the shopper personas varied little. Overall, 38% of respondents used credit or store cards for their most recent online purchase, and 34% used debit cards. Most of the remainder used digital wallets, at 17%,” and just 2.4% used buy now, pay later (BNPL).
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