Comparison shopping site PriceMe asked 460 of its registered users a range of questions about their online shopping habits as part of its annual survey recently. And, in the slightly surprising/unflinchingly honest words of PriceMe’s marketing director Chris Palmer, the results are “not exactly riveting reading”.
Maybe it was a cunning trick of reverse psychology to get recipients of the release to see just how uninteresting the results were, but in some ways, he’s right. Survey results showing that online shopping in New Zealand is continuing to grow and shoppers are becoming more comfortable with online search prior to making a purchasing decision could hardly be classified as searing insights. But there were some moderately interesting findings, like 63 percent of respondents saying they regularly use daily deals sites to shop and 16 percent of the respondents who own a smartphone saying they regularly use their device to make an online transaction.
M-commerce (transactions conducted via a smart-phone such as iPhone or Android) is starting to make an appearance in the survey, says Palmer, and with the rising demand for apps of any kind and mobile payment platforms like Google Wallet being released, this mobile trend doesn’t look like slowing down.
“If retailers want to reach a new generation of shoppers, they will need to look at opening up other channels such as integrating mobile into their online offering, as take-up of this more convenient form of shopping increases.”
For PriceMe, which features over 400,000 products from around 240 Kiwi retailers, and other online retailers, the most encouraging result was the expectation that respondents would spend more in the next 12 months on online purchases than they did the previous 12 months.
“We can see from our traffic data and analytics that online shoppers in New Zealand are spending significantly more time reading product reviews and comparing prices than they were even 12 months ago,” he says.
Check the percentages:
- 20% carry out some form of online comparison shopping every day, while a further 25% of users say they go online to comparison shop at least once per month
- 25% purchase something online each week and 67% shop online at least once per month or more
- 52% spend between 2-5 hours or greater each week searching online for products
- 29% spent more than $1,000 on online purchases in the last 12 months and 30.5% expect to do so again in the next 12 months. 76% spent $250-$500 or more the last 12 months and 79% expect to do so again in the coming 12 months.
- 57% said that price was the most important factor when researching products online prior to purchasing
- 48% said that buying a reputable brand from a reputable retailer was the second-most important factor when researching products online
- 63% said that expert/user product reviews were important to them when researching products online, while 36% said that viewing a product demonstration video before making a purchasing decision was also important
- 63% regularly shop for daily deals from various NZ one-day-only deal sites
