Shoppers Say: Thanksgiving Before Christmas, Please!
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Americans want to finish eating their Thanksgiving dinner before they turn their attention to St. Nick. According to a new survey, 78 percent of Americans think stores should not play Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, and 75 percent say stores also should refrain from Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving.
Once Thanksgiving has passed, however, consumers feel stores should turn their attention to the holiday season. Seventy-five percent said stores should have a specific Cyber Monday policy in place for that busy online shopping day. Additionally, 73 percent felt stores and retailers should have an app to help shoppers during the holidays.
Three-quarters of shoppers said they will be shopping online this holiday season. The majority of those shoppers will do so through their home computers, but 17 percent said they will do so using a work computer.
Forty-four percent of shoppers said they will be using their tablet to shop, while 34 percent said they will use their smartphone.
All that online shopping is replacing traditional shopping methods. Nineteen percent of shoppers say they will do so through a mail order catalog, while just 10 percent will do so through the phone.
"The results of our Holiday Readiness Survey show that Americans think stores shouldn't deck the halls until after Thanksgiving,” said Tom Lounibos, chief executive of SOASTA, a program-testing company that conducted the research. "An overwhelming majority of Americans want stores to focus on making sure their websites are ready for Cyber Monday and that their mobile apps are capable of handling the shopping demand. So instead of decorating for the holidays, stores should test their online presence instead, making sure their websites and their mobile apps can handle millions of people from all over the world at the same time."
The research, conducted for SOASTA by Harris Interactive information, is based on the responses of 2,346 people.
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