Attack of the Holiday Shopping Surveys

It seems like every couple of days now someone is putting out a holiday shopping-related survey. This is a logical PR move in anticipation of what will undoubtedly be a heavy season for e-commerce. After receiving the fourth or fifth one, I finally decided I needed to round them up (forgive me if I missed one).

Yahoo:

Three out of four (76 percent) holiday shoppers said they plan to shop for holiday gifts online, and a similar number, 75 percent, said they are likely to purchase gifts online from small businesses, according to a new survey commissioned by Yahoo! Small Business and conducted by Harris Interactive. Survey respondents expressed strong support for e-commerce with small businesses that offer a secure payment system, easy customer checkout and free shipping.

Nearly a third of holiday shoppers (30 percent) said that they would do half or more of their holiday shopping online, and nearly two thirds (63 percent) said online specialty, ‘niche,’ or boutique retailers are one of the “best places” to shop for unusual or hard-to-find gifts.

Google:

According to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Google Checkout, 40% of employed U.S. adults say they’ll be doing at least some of their online holiday shopping from work this year, with 1 in 4 of those shoppers logging on to track down that perfect gift on Monday, November 27. (57% plan to shop during coffee and lunch breaks, while 34% will wait until the end of the workday.)

Google is promoting Checkout to both consumers and merchants. Here’s the new consumer entry point (going live Monday after American turkey day)

Advertising.com:

Hosted by online market research company InsightExpress, the survey assessed consumer holiday shopping behaviors and expectations for 2006 from 500 survey respondents.

Survey data indicate that 2006 will be another strong season for online retailers. Well over half of the survey respondents plan to spend as much or more than they spent online during the 2005 holiday season. They also plan to go online early, with nearly a third of all respondents planning to begin their online shopping before Thanksgiving.

Consumers were also asked to indicate why they go online during the holiday season. They identified generating gift ideas, comparing product features and prices, and the convenience of shopping from home as the three most compelling reasons for shopping online.

The data also indicate, however, that holiday shoppers don’t always purchase online immediately – researching products for up to a month before buying a product. In addition, after researching products online, 60 percent of respondents still prefer to buy offline.

Become.com (based largely on Jupiter data):

• 68% of consumers say free shipping is the most important cost savings incentive to shop online (per third-party research commissioned by Become.com).
• 40% of consumers are reluctant to shop online due to shipping costs.
• 37% of online holiday purchases will be made after the ground-shipping deadline (according to Jupiter Research).
• In all, online holiday retail sales will grow to $32 billion in 2006 – up 18% over last year.

So what conclusions can we draw from all this? Basically:

• People will do as much or more online shopping as they did last year
• Some significant percentage of that will happen at work (posing challenges re capturing conversions when people are at work and then transact later at home)
• People love free shipping
• People research products online but still largely convert offline (the Advertising.com numbers were based on an online survey and underestimate the audience doing online research but converting offline)

By contrast, according to MORI Research (2006 for the NAA, n=4020), 90% of US adults buy offline and 7% buy online, but 66% use the Internet for shopping-related research. And once again, e-commerce is about 2.7% of overall US retail. But the Internet continues to influence more and more of those offline transactions.

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Related: In today’s MediaPost (reg req’d), Shanka Gupta discusses two more holiday shopping surveys: one by AOL and another released earlier in the week (the one I missed above) by DoubleClick.