Report: Loyalty Turns Australia’s Convenience Shoppers Into SMB Fans

Small, local businesses are a big part of most Australian consumers’ daily lives.

Not only do 55 percent of Aussies regularly shop with local businesses, but 22 percent of them report shopping with such stores more than they shop with any other type of retailer. This is far more than the 32 percent and 41 percent of consumers who shop locally in the U.S. or the U.K., respectively.

PYMNTS’ latest research suggests that there are many more Australians who would like to shop with local businesses more — if they were given an added incentive to do so.

Nearly half of all Australian consumers want to be able to earn rewards and other special offers when shopping with small and family-run businesses, but only 27 percent of them currently have access to such offers. Closing this gap can help Australian businesses boost their bottom lines. The trick is to deliver the rewards programs that Australian consumers actually want to use.

The Making Loyalty Work For Small Businesses: Australia Edition, a PYMNTS and Pollinate collaboration, provides an overview of how small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) in shopping strips across Australia can provide local loyalty programs to boost conversion. PYMNTS surveyed a census-balanced panel of 1,051 Australian consumers as part of our broader study into the shopping habits and loyalty demands of 4,519 consumers across Australia, the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil to find out why Aussies shop locally, what they want from their local loyalty programs and which organizations they trust the most to deliver those programs.

Australia’s geography and its consumers’ appetite for convenient shopping experiences appear to drive Australian consumers’ interest in shopping locally. Australia is a massive country with a low population density compared to the other nations in our study, and its consumers are often driven to find places to shop that do not require them to travel too far out of their way. This is evident in the fact that Australians are far more likely than consumers in the U.S., the U.K. and Brazil to say they choose where to shop at least in part based on whether a business is conveniently located, with 45 percent doing so. This compares to 34 percent of consumers in the other three nations in our study who choose businesses based at least in part on whether they are conveniently located.

SMBs in shopping strips across Australia know all too well that having a good location is not always enough to get local shoppers through their doors, however. Tapping loyalty programs can help, but only if those programs provide the features that Australian consumers actually want. Making Loyalty Work For Small Businesses: Australia Edition delivers actionable insights into how local Australian businesses can make customized, digital loyalty programs work for them.

To find out more about what Australian consumers want from their local shops and their loyalty programs, download the playbook.