Supply chain crisis impacts holiday shopping

Problems with the supply chain were always going to have an effect on 2021’s holiday shopping season. New data from Adobe gives some idea of what the scale of the effect is likely to be as consumers look to kick off their holiday shopping early.

In October, shoppers saw two billion out-of-stock messages, a rise of 250% over a comparable pre-pandemic period (January 2020) and a staggering rise of 325% compared with October 2019. The electronics category is hardest hit, followed by jewelry, apparel, home and garden, and pet products.

An 8% growth in consumer spending YoY is evidence that consumers are shopping earlier, and brands have been reaching out with earlier deals and discounts. Curbside pick-up stayed steady with last October, while there has been a small increase in expedited shipping requests.

Why we care. First, this is real transaction data rather than data about consumer intentions gathered from surveys. Adobe has access to over one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites.

Second, as we’ve been saying for at least a year, the supply chain crisis has the capacity to wreck the customer experience. Late fulfilment on orders is to be expected, but the early surge in out-of-stock inventory means customer journeys ending before a purchase is made. The challenge to marketers? Be empathetic, be transparent and be honest. You can’t fix the supply chain; you can try to ameliorate how bad your customers feel.

About The Author

Kim Davis

Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.