America to Stores: Don’t Decorate for Christmas Until After Thanksgiving; Focus on Online Presence Instead

78% of us don’t want stores to play Christmas music before Thanksgiving

75% say stores should have a “Cyber Monday” website that can handle millions of people shopping for the holidays at once

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SOASTA^®, Inc., the leader in cloud and mobile testing today announced the findings of its 2012 Holiday Readiness survey that discovered that 78% of American adults think stores should not play Christmas music and 75% think stores shouldn’t put up Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving. However, nearly the same percentage of adults (75%) felt stores should have a specific “Cyber Monday” website that can handle millions of people shopping for the holidays at once while 73% of Americans felt that stores should have a dependable app for smartphones or tablets that can easily handle mobile sales for the holidays. In fact, a majority of Americans (55%) now report owning a smartphone (48%) and/or a tablet (23%) and 16% saying they own a more basic e-reader like an Amazon Kindle or Nook. This information comes from SOASTA’s survey of 2,346 American adults aged 18 and older conducted online on its behalf by Harris Interactive.

“The results of our Holiday Readiness Survey show that Americans think stores shouldn’t ‘Deck the Halls’ until after Thanksgiving”

“The results of our Holiday Readiness Survey show that Americans think stores shouldn’t ‘Deck the Halls’ until after Thanksgiving,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “An overwhelming majority of Americans want stores to focus on making sure their websites are ready for Cyber Monday and that their mobile apps are capable of handling the shopping demand. So instead of decorating for the holidays, stores should test their online presence instead, making sure their websites and their mobile apps can handle millions of people from all over the world at the same time.”

SOASTA’s 2012 Holiday Readiness Survey shows that 92% of Americans plan to shop for the holiday season – and that more holiday shoppers plan to shop online than at physical brick and mortar stores (75% and 69%, respectively). Here’s how it breaks down:

• 75% will shop online
  • accessed through their home computer (69%)
  • accessed through their work computer (17%)
  • 44% through an app or website through their tablet
  • 34% through their smartphone
• 19% through mail order catalogue (by calling/placing order via phone or physically mailing an order form)
• 10% through a phone order

The survey results come as SOASTA prepares many of the top online retailers today for the busy holiday season by providing a mobile test automation solution that ensures websites and mobile apps work as planned, while catering to hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. For more information, please go to www.soasta.com

About SOASTA

SOASTA is the leader in cloud and mobile testing. Its web and mobile test automation solution, CloudTest, enables developers, QA professionals and IT operations teams to test with unprecedented speed, scale and precision. The innovative product set streamlines test creation, automates provisioning and execution, and distills analytics to deliver actionable intelligence faster. With SOASTA, companies can have confidence that their applications will perform as designed, even in peak traffic. SOASTA’s customers include many of today’s most successful brands including American Girl, Chegg, Gilt Groupe, Hallmark, Intuit, Microsoft and Netflix. SOASTA is privately held and headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. For more information about SOASTA, please visit www.soasta.com.

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States by Harris Interactive on behalf of SOASTA from September 17, 2012 - September 19, 2012 among 2,346 adults age 18+. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact William McCormick

SOASTA is a registered trademark of SOASTA, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Other product or company names mentioned may be trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.