Search Marketing Blog
Consumers Expect Increased Online Shopping this Buying Season
Posted by Sean McMahon on 09.05.2008In an article titled ‘Will more consumers switch to the Web in Q4’, eMarketer revealed today that more participants in a ‘Back to School Survey’ conducted by PriceGrabber.com preferred purchasing products through e-commerce sites than at brick-and-mortar stores.
The following graph depicts the results from this August 2008 survey:
An encouraging nugget that can be gleaned from this article is the fact that during the fourth quarter of 2007, more consumers actually favored purchasing items from physical retail stores than from online Web sites, according to the eHoliday Mood Survey from Shop.org.
As shown in the graph from this Shop.org survey, 17.8% of consumers identified e-commerce sites as their primary shopping channel in the last quarter of 2007. This percentage from last year is almost half as much as what consumers proclaimed they are going to spend online (31%) during the same period this year, as discovered from the PriceGrabber Back to School survey.
If these percentages play-out this season, it should be an even stronger year for e-commerce sites than last year. Therefore, now’s the time to implement a professional online client acquisition strategy designed to capture this projected surge in e-commerce spending.
Natalie Bedd 09.05.2008 at 11:23 pm
Interesting article, I think the 17.8% figure will surely go up - given that the money you save on gas and the effort of time-consuming shopping is quite a deterrent. A host of new sites available though - auctions seem to be out and oh, some like LootStreet.com try to add a bargaining twist to the online shopping experience, however - the implementation has a long long way to go!