High Street brands enjoy merry Xmas online
- Added:
- Jan 23, 2008
Whilst eBay and Amazon remain the most popular retailers online in the UK, the ten fastest growing are all high street brands, according to new research from Neilsen//Netratings.
The data showed that eBay was the most popular retailer online during the 2007 Christmas shopping period - visited by an average of 15 million Britons per month in November and December.
Of the ten most popular retailers, Asda (+68%) and Marks & Spencer (+54%) experienced the strongest audience growth since the 2006 Christmas shopping period.
Three of the five most popular retailers online were pure online players (eBay, Amazon and Play.com) whilst high street retailers accounted for seven of the ten most popular.
UKs most popular Christmas retailers online: Nov/Dec 2007
|
Rank |
Retailer |
Average UK monthly Unique Audience in Nov/Dec 07 (millions) |
Average UK monthly Unique Audience in Nov/Dec 06 (millions) |
% UA increase from Nov/Dec 06 to Nov/Dec 07 |
|
1 |
eBay |
15.0 |
14.9 |
1% |
|
2 |
Amazon |
14.0 |
11.4 |
22% |
|
3 |
Argos |
7.0 |
5.3 |
31% |
|
4 |
Tesco |
6.7 |
5.9 |
14% |
|
5 |
Play.com |
4.8 |
3.6 |
34% |
|
6 |
Marks & Spencer |
3.4 |
2.2 |
54% |
|
7 |
Currys |
2.9 |
2.2 |
31% |
|
8 |
John Lewis |
2.8 |
2.1 |
33% |
|
9 |
HMV |
2.7 |
2.0 |
39% |
|
10 |
Asda |
2.6 |
1.6 |
68% |
Source: Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications, Nov/Dec 2006 – Nov/ Dec 2007
e.g. eBay was visited by an average of 15 million Britons per month in November 07 and December 07, 1% more than averaged in November 06 and December 06
Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst, Nielsen Online, “eBay and Amazon remain, by some distance, the most dominant retailers online. In terms of visitor numbers, however, it tended to be a great Christmas for most retailers online. The top ten retailers, on average, were visited by 33% more people than they were during the same period in 2006. This is particularly impressive, considering that the Internet population itself ‘only’ grew by 10% in this time.”
Fastest growing retailers online
Swarovski experienced the strongest audience growth (+201%) between the Nov/Dec 2006 and Nov/Dec 2007 periods.
All ten of the fastest growing retailers online are high street brands – they include two from the jewellery sector, two from home & fashion, three from clothing, one from health & beauty, a supermarket and a computer games retailer.
UK’s fastest-growing online retailers*: Nov/Dec 2006 - Nov/Dec 2007
|
Rank |
Retailer* |
Average UK Unique Audience in Nov/Dec 07 (000s) |
Average UK Unique Audience in Nov/Dec 06 (000s) |
% increase from Nov/Dec 06 to Nov/Dec 07 |
|
1 |
Swarovski |
355 |
118 |
201% |
|
2 |
Superdrug |
338 |
122 |
177% |
|
3 |
Matalan |
444 |
197 |
126% |
|
4 |
Morrisons |
381 |
173 |
120% |
|
5 |
Ernest Jones |
219 |
104 |
111% |
|
6 |
Game |
1,814 |
897 |
102% |
|
7 |
H&M |
226 |
114 |
98% |
|
8 |
La Senza |
347 |
184 |
88% |
|
9 |
Monsoon |
442 |
247 |
79% |
|
10 |
BHS |
392 |
222 |
76% |
*Minimum requirement = average of 100,000 Uniques across Nov/Dec 06
Source: Nielsen Online, UK NetView, home & work data, including applications, Nov/Dec 2006 – Nov/ Dec 2007
“Retail online still tends to be dominated by the pure online players. However, the high street brands have really come on leaps and bounds over the last year and have far outperformed their pure online competitors in terms of growth,” Burmaster added.
Terms most closely associated with Christmas
To better understand sentiment towards Christmas, Nielsen Online’s BuzzMetrics applied a Brand Association Map™ (BAM) based on tracking conversations in UK blogs between September and November 2007. With the keyword "Christmas" at the centre, the BAM plots the most associated words and phrases in online conversations. The closer the words are to the centre, the greater the association.
‘Presents’ is the word most associated with Christmas. In terms of activities, ‘shopping’ is the word most associated with Christmas
Burmaster, concluded: “It’s not surprising that retail has done so well at Christmas when you see what people discuss online around Christmas. Words such as gifts, shopping, spend, money and buying are heavily associated with Christmas - good news for the retailers but probably disappointing for those worried about the diminishing spiritual and religious associations with Christmas.”
