Uncommitted customers make up 79% of all retail customers, which means they’re already shopping at your business. But how many of your customers fall into this group, and what would happen if they visited just once more per month?

Securing that visit is critical, because cross-shopping behavior is dominating every corner of the retail landscape. Without loyalty or a cash-back offer, more than 40% of your customers in a given month won’t return in the next year.

The answer is one of the primary findings of Upside’s new report, Winning the Uncommitted Customer. That change would be significant.: Earning just one more visit per month from uncommitted customers could lead to an 84%+ revenue bump. 

In this analysis, we considered what portion of a given retailer’s customer base is made up of uncommitted customers. Then, we took the ticket size of an uncommitted customer and multiplied it by the portion of customers who are uncommitted, which showed the change in average monthly spending per customer.

Uncommitted customers in each category are defined as those in the new, infrequent, and occasional customer segments. Segment thresholds differ in each category based on average shopping frequencies:

• Grocery: Regular customers visit four times per month. Anyone who visits less is uncommitted.
• Fuel: Regular customers visit once per month. Anyone who visits less is uncommitted.  
• Restaurant: Regular customers visit once every two months. Anyone who visits less is uncommitted.

Let’s look closer at what Upside’s data showed in each category. 

Grocery

With more than nine in 10 shoppers exhibiting uncommitted behavior, grocery is the category with the largest share of uncommitted customers. Snacks from a big-box retailer, produce from a local grocer, paper products from a wholesale club — does it sound familiar? You might be uncommitted, too.

Those uncommitted customers visit you less than once a month — 81% fewer times than your loyal customers — but make up, on average, 72% of your revenue.

In grocery, just one more trip per month from uncommitted customers could lead to an 84% increase in overall revenue.

Restaurant

Of our three major retail categories in our analysis, restaurant customers were actually the most committed. But even so, more than 70% of them were not. Since customers tend to visit a given restaurant less frequently than they do a gas station or a grocery store, restaurants have the most to gain by winning just one more additional trip.  

Those uncommitted customers visit you just 0.2 times a month — 70% less than your loyal customers — but make up, on average, 70% of your revenue.

For restaurants, just one more trip per month from uncommitted customers could lead to a 209% increase in overall revenue.

Fuel

Unlike restaurant or grocery retailers, fuel retailers earn the majority of their revenue from their committed customers. But with just about three in four of their customers exhibiting uncommitted behavior, retailers in fuel could stand to nearly double their revenue by winning just one additional monthly trip from those who are uncommitted. 

Those uncommitted customers visit you just 0.4 times a month — 83% less than your loyal customers — but make up, on average, 34% of your revenue.

In fuel, just one more trip per month from uncommitted customers could lead to an 88% increase in overall revenue.

Securing that transformative trip

The key to overcoming the retention hurdle is habit formation, and it starts shortly after the first transaction. To learn how to help customers form habits — boosting retention and earning incremental profit — dig into Upside’s full report, Winning the Uncommitted Customer.

The exclusive insights in the report are based on: 

• 75+ million transactions from 7 million retail customers over three years.
• 10,000+ survey responses from both consumers and retailers in the general population 

Get your copy here.

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