Why do shoppers leave stores without buying?

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Why do shoppers leave stores without buying?.

Pierhouse discovered in their recent shopper survey that the top reason for leaving a store without buying is not Price. In fact price comes in third. In the number one slot 91% of shoppers said that they were likely to leave a store if they could not find a specific product. The product might have been out of stock, or even worse, in stock but difficult to find because the signage was missing or not helpful.

In the key area of getting the basics right 63% of shoppers stated that they are likely to leave if they can't see the price of a product.  Malcolm Wicks, Marketing Director at Pierhouse said that their store visits continue to find numerous examples of products without a price ticket and that the shopper survey confirmed just how important it is for every shopper to be able to easily see the price of every product in the store. Even having a price ticket is not always enough as 61% of shoppers said that they are likely to leave without buying if they can't see enough information about the product to make a buying decision.

In second spot 41% of shoppers are highly likely to leave without buying due to either too little or too much attention from store staff.  This issue raised more emotive comments from survey respondents than anything else. Interestingly the comments were split 50-50 between too much and too little attention.

Another issue that generated a lot of interest was queuing. In spite of efforts by many retailers to reduce queuing it remains a significant issue for shoppers. In fact they may be getting even more impatient as 26% of shoppers stated that they were highly likely to leave a store if the queue was too long.

If you would like to know more and also read about showrooming and loud music a full summary of the survey findings is at: www.pierhouse.co.uk/surveyresults