New research exploring reasons behind shopping basket abandonment has revealed that, just like their real world counterparts, online customers love to window shop with 87% abandoning their basket before paying.

The research conducted by marketing and technology company Amaze, in conjunction with the University of Glasgow, has revealed that almost nine out of ten shoppers abandon their shopping basket while 75% of customers claimed they would return at a later date to complete the purchase, effectively using the basket as a wish list.

The research looks into the psychology of online shoppers and provide insights into why customers continue to abandon their shopping basket despite improvements in ecommerce site usability and introduction of behavioural targeting technology. It was found that the pleasure of browsing without the pain of buying is a real phenomenon that online retailers have to take into consideration when developing the e-commerce side of websites.

The report identifies the personalities of three types of online shopper – vague, cost conscious and window shoppers.

42% of shoppers were labelled as ‘vague’ because they seek more information from other people before completing the purchase and stated that they ‘wanted to think about it’ or ‘consult with someone first’. Cost conscious shoppers accounted for 42% of customers and often cited ‘high postage’ costs or ‘found the item cheaper elsewhere’ as reasons why they didn’t complete the sale.

The research found 16% of people surveyed could be labelled as window shoppers with no intention to purchase and claims that these customers should be discounted from online retailers’ abandonment rates.

Tunde Cockshott, Creative Consultant at Amaze, said: “While techniques can be used to convince ‘vague’ and ‘cost conscious’ shoppers to buy, it doesn’t matter what retailers offer the ‘window shopper’ type of customer: they are there to browse, not spend money. They experience the pleasure of shopping but without the pain of paying. Retailers can stop scratching their heads trying to work out why shopping baskets are being loaded up only to be left at the checkout because there’s nothing they can do except exclude these visitors from their abandonment figures.”

It was found that shopping basket abandonment was more common for books, movies and music, but less likely around more expensive items including clothing, jewellery, electrical and computing products.

The report concludes that online retailers should look into the psychology of shopping to identify the types of customer and tailor the experience accordingly in order to generate sales, rather than relying on behavioural targeting to present products they might like based on previous browsing.

Tunde Cockshott added: “Online retailers need to realise before they invest in behavioural targeting technology that the psychology of the shopper plays a key role in encouraging potential customers to complete their purchase. Online stores could present hundreds of products that they believe their customers might like but if they’re window shopping, they’ll just walk on by, just like in the real world.

“While window shoppers will remain a fact of life in the real and virtual world, it’s now more important than ever that stores focus on human psychology rather than analytics if they are to get their share of the online consumer’s wallet.”

Suggestions to target customers include promoting comments and ratings or providing tools that can aid the qualitative decision making process for vague shoppers. Retailers should be as transparent as possible when it comes to the price of purchase, presenting the total cost as soon as possible in a bid to win over those displaying cost conscious shopper behaviour.

The report goes on to explore the thought processes behind using wish lists, identifying two types of customer, cleaners and hoarders, and how usage can indicate the type of shopper they are.

A full copy of the report is available to download (1.2Mb PDF). The research was presented at the IEEE Conference on Commerce and Enterprise Computing event in Vienna on 23 July 2009.