More than half of the par­tic­i­pants in a recent sur­vey say they plan to spend about the same amount of mon­ey on hol­i­day gifts this year as they did in 2013, which makes for anoth­er com­pet­i­tive retail sea­son. In addi­tion, many of those con­sumers will buy at least one gift from behe­moth Ama­zon. Mar­ketLive, a provider of e‑commerce tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices that con­duct­ed the sur­vey, says the best ways for retail­ers to dis­tin­guish them­selves are to cater to mul­ti­task­ing mobile con­sumers, pro­vide rewards for social activ­i­ty, and focus on their nich­es.

Mar­ketLive, a provider of ecom­merce tech­nol­o­gy and ser­vices, announced the results of its Annu­al Online Shop­per Sur­vey for the 2014 hol­i­day sea­son, which it says pro­vides mer­chants with a “roadmap for engag­ing shop­pers dur­ing the next few months.”

Provide A Jolly Mobile Experience For Consumers

Fifty per­cent of hol­i­day shop­pers intend to buy gifts via their mobile devices and 49 per­cent will make pur­chas­es based on a social refer­ral, accord­ing to the sur­vey. In addi­tion, Mar­ketLive says 36 per­cent of those respon­dents plan to pur­chase half or more of their gifts via a mobile device, 70 per­cent are like­ly to do research on their smart­phones and 56 per­cent are like­ly to reserve prod­ucts from their smart­phones for pick-up. The shift to mobile is well known, but Mar­ketLive CEO Ken Burke said retail­ers are still caught off-guard in terms of mobile readi­ness over­all. In addi­tion, Burke says Mar­ketLive works with sev­er­al retail­ers that do big busi­ness for Hal­loween, so it has what he calls a “pre­cur­sor” to the hol­i­day sea­son. As much as 50 per­cent of sales on these Hal­loween sites are com­ing from mobile because con­sumers are buy­ing prod­ucts on the go, Burke said. Retail brands need to think about how they can pro­mote mobile in their over­all strate­gies with mer­chan­dise that address­es the mobile cus­tomer or pro­mo­tions specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed to mobile cus­tomers. That being said, retail­ers do have bet­ter mobile sites over­all with respon­sive designs and are pay­ing more atten­tion to make the over­all user expe­ri­ence bet­ter and mak­ing check­out and pay­ments eas­i­er. “Next year, the trend will be mobile pay­ments,” Burke said. Thanks in part to the rise of Ama­zon Pay­ments, Visa Check­out, Mas­ter­Pass and Apple Pay, Burke said alter­nate pay­ment meth­ods are only begin­ning.

Social: The Gift That Will Keep Giving

In addi­tion, 30 per­cent of par­tic­i­pants in the Mar­ketLive sur­vey say they’ve made a pur­chase as a direct result of inter­ac­tions on social media, 49 per­cent will make a pur­chase because of a social refer­ral and 44 per­cent intend to dis­cov­er new prod­ucts via social net­works. Once prod­ucts have actu­al­ly been pur­chased, 52 per­cent feel it is impor­tant to review prod­ucts they have pur­chased, 48 per­cent say it is impor­tant to share prod­uct rec­om­men­da­tions with friends and fam­i­ly via social chan­nels, and 42 per­cent will pin items on Pin­ter­est. One way to cap­i­tal­ize upon such will­ing­ness to pro­vide con­tent is to encour­age cus­tomers to com­ment on Face­book posts on prod­uct pages or to do Q&As and encour­age con­sumers to ask ques­tions and let their social net­works answer those ques­tions. “What we’re find­ing is dri­ving sales is lit­er­al­ly the mer­chant cre­at­ing social activ­i­ty on the site,” Burke said. That means dis­counts for refer­ring friends or “pin it to win it” pro­mo­tions on Pin­ter­est. “A reward for doing some­thing social­ly – that’s where the mag­ic is,” he adds.

Can Retailers Compete With Amazon?

While com­pe­ti­tion from Ama­zon and its influ­ence on pric­ing is always an issue, the sur­vey shows that retail­ers can have a great hol­i­day sea­son by focus­ing on key areas that will affect shop­ping behav­ior. Not­ing Ama­zon is “always a force to be reck­oned with” and “the num­ber of cus­tomers that are going to buy at least one gift from Ama­zon is extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high,” Burke said all hope is not lost for oth­er retail brands. One great way to com­pete with Ama­zon more force­ful­ly is with a great mobile expe­ri­ence, but also to look at “the things Ama­zon doesn’t do as effec­tive­ly for your spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry.” In oth­er words, retail­ers “have like cus­tomers with like inter­ests and a brand can be very effec­tive and be very niche‑y by cre­at­ing great con­tent,” Burke said. In addi­tion, Burke says, “Free ship­ping, free ship­ping, free ship­ping. With thresh­olds, that’s prob­a­bly the sin­gle best dis­count you can do. It helps lim­it your expo­sure a bit and any­thing tied to free ship­ping is the #1 dis­count.” Accord­ing to Mar­ketLive, the sur­vey includ­ed a “ran­dom sam­ple of 1,000 U.S. con­sumers who had shopped online at least four times with­in the past year, own a smart­phone, and typ­i­cal­ly spend $250 or more online annu­al­ly.” Mar­ketLive says it pow­ers ecom­merce sites like Armani Exchange, Par­ty City, Per­ri­cone MD, Sport Chalet, Sun­dance, Helzberg Dia­monds, John Deere, Title Nine, and Inter­mix.