Orphan Products – The New Key Indicator

When a customer fills their shopping cart with numerous items and then abandons some at the checkout counter, those items become known as “orphan products”. This is a concept being carefully measured by many savvy retailers for both Internet sales programs and in brick-and-mortar stores. I believe it applies everywhere because it is an indicator of a changing mentality, a new context, a “less is better” context that is affecting the way America shops and the way retailers market.

One retailer that does a huge online business reported items orphaned in a virtual shopping cart, abandoned when it came time to checkout was over 68%. That’s huge. In retail stores, numbers upwards of 58-64% are being reported, with significant increases over the same time last year.

Americans are weaning themselves from their favorite pastime of buying. They still love to shop, but now there are self-imposed limitations. We are seeing shoppers checkout lines asking for subtotals along the way and when they reach their own predetermined limit, they leave everything else in the shopping cart and close out the sale. Alternatively, they are asking themselves before checking out if they really need or just want each item, rejecting wants in exchange for needs.

Many buyers are also abandoning purchases because of add-on fees and expenses that cause them to question the need of the purchase. In fact, one major national retailer has programmed into their online website a bounce-back screen allowing the customer who has abandoned a certain dollar value of purchases to waive shipping and handling fees if they add back to their order what they initially chose and then abandoned.

Returns are also way up as buyers become remorseful when they get home and then return the items for cash, not just credit as was previously deemed adequate, knowing they may not be shopping again so soon.

The point is, America’s purchasing style is changing. Retailers, service providers, anyone selling anything must grasp this and make adjustments accordingly. The old days are gone. You must lower your revenue expectations, change your business equation and look at debt forgiveness as a way to survive and stabilize, ready to grow again, slowly but profitably.