Erie, Pa. – Electronics has become the holiday gift of choice as
consumers regard their CE 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 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 PriceGrabber 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.
