Research by media planning and buying specialist Carat has revealed that Irish consumers now buy one in three Christmas presents online, with the rest being bought in bricks and mortar stores.
Now in its fourth year of tracking online Christmas shopping, Carat also found that the average minimum spend hasn’t changed since last year, standing at €21, but there has been a significant increase in online spending for both Males and those aged 55 and over.
Men now have an average minimum online spend of €28 and a maximum average of €230, while women spend from €18 to €135.
Even though consumers aged 35-54 have the lowest minimum spend of €17, this group also has the highest maximum spend amongst age groups of €177, compared to €170 for 18-34 year olds and €148 for the 55+ group.
Online shoppers aged 55 and over now have the highest minimum spend of €28, with the youngest group surveyed spending at least €23.
Price, flexibility and saving time were listed as the top reasons to shop online, which has been a consistent theme over the last three years. Another strong driver is being able to buy products that are not otherwise available in Ireland.
This year’s study also shows that is becoming more difficult to drive traffic to eCommerce sites, with a decrease evident across the board for all channels.
According to Carat, email has overtaken TV ads and risen into the top five ways to drive traffic, with 41% saying they would visit a website after reading one. Ads on social networks, however, have taken a significant hit, dropping from 41% to 22%.
Personal reference is still a significant driver for 62%, coming in third behind search engines used to either find a particular item (71%) or a retailer (65%).
© 2015 - Checkout Magazine by Jenny Whelan.
