Consumers aren't fully embracing virtual shopping tools this holiday season

Dive Brief:

Thirty percent of consumers will do all of their holiday shopping online, 45% will do half their shopping online and 4% will only shop in stores, according to a recent Blue Fountain Media survey of 1,000 consumers.
Nearly half (45%) of consumers said that they will be using voice assistants, virtual shopping tools and chatbots for their holiday shopping this year.
Regarding companies' use of consumer data, nearly 70% of shoppers said if they knew "for sure" their personal information was being shared with five or more companies, they would reconsider shopping with that online retailer. Only 5% of respondents indcated they "didn't care" how their personal information is shared, per the report.

Dive Insight:

Blue Fountain Media's survey issued some interesting findings on emerging technologies. According to the report, 21% of respondents said they would use visual search engine platforms like Instagram and Pinterest for holiday shopping. However, only 12% are planning to shop via a voice assistant like Siri, Google Home or Alexa, even as reports from Sumo Heavy and Voicebot.ai and Voicify have indicated increasing ownership and use of voice-enabled tech for shopping. Additionally, Amazon — which recently revealed that this Cyber Monday was its biggest shopping day on record — stated that its voice devices were some of its best selling items.

These findings come after retailers like Farfetch, Amazon and Wayfair have introduced their own visual tech features. Meanwhile, Syte, the visual AI tech firm, raised $21.5 million this fall and Google announced plans to add Google Assistant to more than 1 billion devices earlier this year.

As retailers face higher online and mobile visitors, Blue Fountain Media's report shows that more consumers are becoming conscious of retailers' data sharing. It's no secret that some retailers have had a hard time handling cybersecurity threats, not to mention their hefty costs. Juniper Research estimates that fraudulent card-not-present transactions will cost retailers $130 billion by 2023, and the Forter Fraud Attack Index found an increase in fraud attacks against clothing and accessory companies. Perhaps now is the time for retailers to rethink their data sharing and security efforts.