Are you a savvy shopper?

Everyone loves a bargain.  Our shopping habits have changed so much though in recent years how do we ensure we shop savvy?

As well as great products and service customers today expect a deal or a discount to win their business and this is especially true online. The traditional mark-down sale can still be found on the high-street but our virtual shoppers are out to hunt down much more than just a straight forward end-of-season sale.

It's common place now to even find them browsing in a bricks-and-mortar shop, using a price-checking App on their phone and then ordering online; perhaps whilst sipping their Caramel Frappuccino just a few doors up the street.

After finding the best price they can even buy at an online marketplace like Ebay and have their order delivered to their local Argos store for them to collect when they next fancy a whipped-cream-topped-caramel-drink in a cardboard cup with their name scribbled on the side.

Many though will go home and research the best price, using Google Shopping or one of many price comparison tools. They will sign up for discount voucher emails with various companies looking for and expecting money saving discounts to be delivered to their inbox daily.  A savvy buyer might even be so brazen as to email and ask for a discount voucher - and could easily expect a 10% discount code by reply.

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Student discounts of 10% are creeping up to 20%.  Free delivery is the norm.  It's a changing world and it's changing fast. Technological advances are helping to drive this shift.  Retailers that fail to recognise or fail to change might struggle to compete successfully in this new twenty-first century marketplace.

I don't believe the high-street declines we've seen over the last few years mark the end.  The end of an era definitely, but a new high street is emerging, it will look different and not just in the form of more coffee shops and longer sweet-coffee-flavoured-mocha-this-and-frappa-that-drink-names.

Unusually our businesses Love Kates and Handy Ideas have evolved non-traditionally in that we started in ecommerce.  I can see a day though when we too will embrace the new-look town or city center in some form or other.  We were one of the few original shops to be selected by Ebay to take part in their successful click-and-collect pilot scheme and have seen the success and popularity with customers of that.  We offer the same service from our warehouse, but unless you are driving past on your way to the beach collecting from a rural warehouse just outside Newquay is probably a little out the way for most.

In the meantime, the savvy shopper will continue to expect us to offer great deals, special offers, freebies, giveaways, competitions and discount vouchers.  They will expect us to promote ourselves and everything we have to offer on all their social media feeds too.  Perhaps most significantly they will start to change their expectations of the high-street shop and traditional retailers.

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