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PriceGrabber: CE To Be Tops For Holiday Season

ERIE, PA. —

In yet another survey of holiday
gifts — there have been plenty in the past two
weeks — CE will be the holiday gift of choice
as consumers regard their devices as necessities
rather than indulgences.

According to a new survey by comparison
shopping site PriceGrabber, 70 percent of
consumers said they plan to buy “practical”
rather than luxury gifts this season, and the
majority of those (64 percent) said they will
purchase CE for work, school or as replacements
for older devices.

The study also forecasts a very merry
Christmas for Apple. Forty-seven percent
of respondents said they would prefer to receive
an iPhone 4 over other smartphones,
and 59 percent cited iPad as the superior
choice for e-reading.

Motorola’s Droid was preferred by 22 percent
of smartphone hopefuls, while 13 percent
said they would like to find a BlackBerry
Torch in their Christmas stocking.

Among the e-reading crowd,

Amazon.com

’s Kindle came in second place, selected
by 21 percent of consumers, while
Barnes & Noble’s Nook trailed at 5 percent,
and Dell’s Streak and Samsung’s Galaxy
Tab were each cited by 3 percent of respondents.

PriceGrabber expects tablet PCs to be
one of the most popular CE gifts this holiday
season, based on a 330 percent increase
in the number of searches for the keyword
“tablet” on the site over last year. While the
iPad is expected to continue to dominate the
category, other top contenders may include
Sony Vaio, Toughbook 19 and Asus, based
on PriceGrabber visits.

The vast majority of consumers (80 percent)
also said they will closely monitor
retail pricing for the best deals on their favorite
products this holiday season, given
the lessons of last year’s fierce promotions.
“Last year, we saw large-scale price wars
between major retailers, which resulted in
deeply discounted products,” noted Price-
Grabber president Laura Conrad. “This year,
we expect especially competitive price wars
beginning early in the season. Shoppers
need to evaluate the benefit of monitoring
price wars for the lowest price vs. potentially
missing out on the most popular products of
the season.”

Consumers plan to spend an average of
$845 on holiday gifts this year, and a greater
number (66 percent) plan to spend in excess
of $500 than in 2009 (59 percent). The survey
also showed that consumers will make
most of their purchases online (57 percent),
while 40 percent of purchases will be made
in brick-and-mortar stores and 3 percent will
be made from a mobile phone.

The PriceGrabber report, A Deep Dive
into Online Holiday Spending Trends, is
based on 1,839 online responses collected
between Sept. 14 and Oct. 6.

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