Beyen Says Personal Computer Rebates Abound

Niagara Falls, N.Y.— PC vendors are heavily relying on rebates to push sales in the still slow desktop computer category, according to data from Beyen.

This rebate bonanza touched almost every product category, according to Beyen. Just over half of all PC hardware retail offers featured a rebate during the first six months of the year, up from 43.6 during the same period in 2002.

Notebook and desktop computer ad offers had rebates attached at an extremely high frequency with more than two-thirds of all PCs and 75 percent of notebooks including a rebate. However, the actual number of desktop computer ads was down 25.7 percent and flat for notebook computers.

Rebate attach rates were quite strong for other computer hardware products. Lanctot said 59.7 percent of computer speaker ads had rebates. The rate was 70.7 percent for computer monitors, 86.7 percent for CD-R drives, 69.8 percent of audio cards, 61.4 percent of video cards, 81.4 percent for home networking products, 69.9 percent for keyboards and mice and 73 percent for Web cameras.

The very hot digital camera category also saw a large increase in rebates (72.4 percent more), but even with this increase, only 21.4 percent of digital camera ads included rebate offers. Overall digital camera advertising frequency was up 35.4 percent for the first half of the year.