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UK Retail Update:
Post-Christmas
2007 Analysis
January 2008
CLeoa-dw rAinttaelnys tb: yH Reaotbhienr GHooapdki,n Ds,i rHeictwtoisr eo Uf KR esearch and Eva Stringleman, Research Analyst, Hitwise UK
The power of competitive intelligenceContents
1 Introduction 1
2 Executive Summary 2
3 Post-Christmas View 3
4 High-street and Pure-play Retailers 7
5 Hot Products for Christmas 2007 10
6 Branded and Generic Vouchers 13
7 Social Networks 14
8 Recommendations for Christmas 2008 15
9 About Hitwise 16
The power of competitive intelligence
©2008 Hitwise Pty. Ltd. All trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.1 Introduction 1
Christmas is the busiest time of year for the vast majority of retailers, both online and of? ine. The yearly growth in online traf? c over Christmas has continued to garner signi? cant attention from marketers and the media, driving both marketing and consumer spend to the channel. Competitive intelligence becomes increasingly important during this critical period, in order to understand what strategies have worked in the past.
The insights within this report are sourced from the information contained in the Hitwise UK service, and are speci? cally based on UK Internet usage.
The power of competitive intelligence
©2008 Hitwise Pty. Ltd. All trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.2 Executive Summary 2
Boxing Day the most important day for online Christmas shopping. Boxing Day was the busiest day by market share of Internet visits for online shopping in 2007, and the Shopping & Classi? eds industry received more visits during Boxing Day 2007 than in both 2005 and 2006.
Post-Christmas searches for 'sales' trebled. There were more searches for 'boxing day sales' in December 2007 than for 'january sales' in December 2006, with Play.com receiving a quarter of all traf? c from the term 'sale'.
High-street retailers overtook pure-play online retailers two months earlier than in 2006. Traf? c to the websites of high-street retailers previously overtook pure-play retailers only over the Christmas and January sale periods. However, high-street retailers overtook pure-play websites in September 2007, and increased their lead during the peak holiday shopping weeks.
Supermarket websites increased online market share by 2.2% in 2007. One of the main drivers of supermarket websites' growth online was sales of non-food items, such as electrical equipment and entertainment products.
Nintendo Wii, Apple iPhone and digital photo frames were the hot products for Christmas 2007. Nintendo Wii accounted for six in every ten searches for a games console product during November 2007, and there were twice as many searches for 'wii' than 'ipod' and 'iphone' combined. Searches for 'digital photo frames' outstripped those for 'digital camera'.
Women prefer to search for electrical products at department stores instead of specialist electronics retailers. Men are more likely to visit specialist electronics stores, while women prefer department stores and big high street names.
Searches for 'vouchers' reached two-year high. The most searched-for branded voucher was 'tesco vouchers', followed by iTunes and Amazon. There was a noticeable growth in vouchers for pure-play online retailers in 2007.
The power of competitive intelligence
©2008 Hitwise Pty. Ltd. All trademarks and logos are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved.3 Post-Christmas View 3
Boxing Day (26 December) was the busiest day for online shopping based on market share of visits in the UK over the Christmas period, and indeed the whole of 2007. In order to compare 2007 to Boxing Day was the previous years, Hitwise created an index of UK Internet visits to the Hitwise Shopping & Classi? eds busiest day for online industry, using 1 November each year as the base (illustrated in the chart below).shopping in 2007.
Figure 1: UK Internet traf? c to the Hitwise Shopping & Classi? eds industry.
150 2005145 2006) 14000 20071 135 = 130ts1 125reb 120me 115voN 110( x 105edn 100I 95908580 1 3 5 7 9 1 3 5 7 9 11 3 5 7 9 2 4 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 3r r r r r ... [download for more]
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