Identifies cashback company best practices, e-commerce trends, consumer preferences, new market opportunities
The new 2020 Global Cashback Industry Research Report profiles more than 450 global cashback industry leaders, tracks the growth and best practices of the $108 billion industry and analyzes its key role in worldwide e-commerce including during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report highlights the continued growth of the cashback industry since the original 2015 report which first defined the emergence of this key e-commerce sector in the global economy.
“The new report adds substantial insight into the impressive growth of the cashback industry, identifies best practices for the first time, and looks at what’s driving the huge impact on e-commerce and the incentives that are shaping new consumer online buying habits,” said Jeff Domansky, lead author of the report.
He said the research report was originally scheduled for publication in February but as the pandemic struck, the research team decided to analyze website traffic through the end of April compared to traffic at the end of 2019 in order to assess the impact of the pandemic on global cashback leaders.
”We were surprised at the positive results. For example, our research team found one-third of US cashback companies saw increased website traffic in April 2020 and another one-third were stable as they worked round-the-clock to fill orders for essential goods and services to online shoppers,” Domansky said.
Small and midsize cashback operators showed the biggest declines in website traffic between Q4 2019 and the end of April 2020. Operators in the UK and India were hardest hit while those in SE Asia saw mostly stable traffic with strong growth in Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand.
New cashback industry insights
By analyzing 450+ profiles of leading cashback companies in every major world market, researchers identified industry best practices and cashback incentives that are proving popular with online shoppers.
Research shows cashback is a powerful incentive for consumers to return, often within a week of receiving their cashback rewards, to spend more on their favorite online shopping sites. Cashback promotions caused a 3.4 times lift in conversion rate and an average order value increase of 46% (from $76 to $106) according to research.
The majority of cashback operators have responded to mobile shopping trends particularly outside of the US where mobile shopping is an even bigger part of life for consumers. The report identifies the fastest-growing number of mobile cashback app subscribers which number in the tens of millions including India’s Flipkart with more than 100 million mobile subscribers, Lazada (100+ million), and Shopee Indonesia (50+ million).
“Southeast Asian, Chinese, many European and Latin American consumers are mobile-first shoppers and very comfortable with mobile payments,” report co-author Doug Hall noted. “Many industry leaders profiled in the report have more than 10 million cashback shopping app users and those numbers are growing quickly,” he added.
Hall, a global financial payments consultant, said there is little research identifying the scale of the cashback industry, defining what industry leaders are doing worldwide, and assessing its impact on online shopping and sales.
“With an industry that totals more than $108 billion in sales, there was a surprising lack of research available,” said Hall. Thousands of retailers now actively use cashback rewards as a marketing strategy and millions of consumers are spending billions of dollars every month shopping online at leading cashback sites around the world.
The 268-page “2020 Cashback Industry Global Report” is a valuable industry guide and is now available for purchase at www.cashbackindustryreport.com. For more information, contact info [AT] cashbackreport.com
