Hitwise Predicts Shopping Visit Increase for Week between Christmas and New Years
NEW YORK, Dec. 14, 2005— While gift certificates have always been a popular gift choice for the hard-to-please recipient, gift cards have recently risen to prominence as an alternative to participating in the pre-Christmas shopping rush.
According to Hitwise, the world's leading online competitive intelligence service, the market share of U.S. Internet searches containing the words "gift card" was up 32 percent for the week ending December 10, 2005 compared to the previous week (week ending December 3, 2005). Hitwise captured 643 unique search phrases containing the words "gift card" for the four weeks ending December 10, 2005, up 13 percent versus the same week last year (week ending December 11, 2004). Retailer-agnostic gift cards associated with major credit cards such as; "visa gift card", "american express gift card" and "master card gift card" dominated general gift card searches, while "itunes gift card", "olive garden gift card" and "gas gift card" dominated specific gift card searches.
"By examining the number of phrases containing a specific term as well as the volume of searches for that term, online marketers can gain additional insight into consumer behavior and product popularity" said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Worldwide Research at Hitwise. "Combined, the search activity and trend of 2004 online holiday visits, indicate that the week after Christmas will be a busy one for online retailers as shoppers seek to take advantage of post-holiday sales and redeem their gift cards."
Hitwise Predicts Shopping Visits to Increase between Christmas and New Years
Reviewing the week after Christmas 2004, the categories with the largest increases in market share of visits (week ending January 1, 2005) were House & Garden, up 26.9 percent; Health & Beauty, up 16.8 percent; Apparel and Accessories, up 8.8 percent; and Office Supplies, up 5.5 percent. Hitwise 100 online retailers with high growth rates during the week after Christmas 2004 were Pottery Barn, up 45 percent; Home Depot, up 30.2 percent; Lowe's, up 28 percent; and Drugstore.com, up 19.5 percent.
"Based on the repeating pattern and accelerating visits to our Retail 100 Index when comparing the 2004 holiday season to 2005, we expect to see the current daily growth rate of 9% in market share of visits to the category to continue through the beginning of 2006", said Tancer. "Phenomena like online redemption of holiday gift cards, online gift returns and research of post holiday sales will fuel end of year shopping visits."
Top Search Terms containing "gift card"
Period - 4 weeks ending 12/10/05
General Gift Cards
Product Specific Gift Cards
visa gift card
itunes gift card
american express gift card
olive garden gift card
mastercard gift card
gas gift card
gift card
old navy gift card
simon gift card
walmart gift card
free gift card
toys r us gift card
buy visa gift card
wawa gift card sweepstakes
master card gift card
hilary duff gift card
mastercard prepaid gift card
lowes gift card
discover gift card
napster gift card
Weekly Holiday Shopping Tracker:
Data period: week ending December 10, 2005
U.S visits to retail websites accounted for 10.72 percent of all visits to the Internet.
Top growing retail categories last week were: Auctions (up 9.5%), Apparel & Accessories (up 4%), Department Stores (up 3.14%), Books (up 3.11%), and Sports & Fitness (up 2%).
Retail (10.7 percent) was the second most popular online category after Adult (16.4 percent). Retail is again ahead of Email sites (8.2 percent).
The leading product-related search terms driving traffic to retail Web sites were "ipod", "lingerie", "toys", "xbox 360", "mp3 players", "digital cameras", "ipod mini", "auto parts", "furniture", and "cell phones".
Hitwise U.S. Data
Top 15 Shopping & Classifieds Web Sites (ranked by % of total Visits)
Rank By Visits for Week Ending 12/10 /05
Rank
Name
Domain
Market Share
% growth weekly (w/e 12/10/05 compared to w/e 12/03/05)
1.
eBay*
www.ebay.com
19.63%
2.49%
2.
Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
3.48%
6.69%
3.
Walmart.com
www.walmart.com
2.03%
1.76%
4.
Target
www.target.com
1.37%
0.80%
5.
Dell USA
www.dell.com
1.31%
3.46%
6.
BestBuy.com
www.bestbuy.com
1.02%
-4.59%
7.
Craig's List
www.craigslist.org
0.99%
-4.97%
8.
JC Penney
www.jcpenney.com
0.86%
1.38%
9.
CircuitCity.com
www.circuitcity.com
0.76%
-5.71%
10.
Overstock.com
www.overstock.com
0.72%
1.11%
11.
Sears.com
www.sears.com
0.68%
-3.38%
12.
Shopping.com**
www.shopping.com
0.66%
-2.52%
13.
BizRate.com**
www.bizrate.com
0.63%
-4.44%
14.
NetFlix.com
www.netflix.com
0.60%
-0.35%
15.
Shopzilla
www.shopzilla.com
0.59%
-3.19%
*Does not include stand-alone visits to other eBay sites ( eBay Motors, eBay Stores)
**Only includes visits to these stand-alone sites www.shopping.com and www.bizrate.com and not other Shopping.com or Shopzilla owned properties.
Contact: For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Lizzie Babarczy: press@hitwise.com (212) 380 2910.
About Hitwise:
Hitwise is the world's leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.
By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites. Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as search marketing, affiliate programs, online advertising, visitor segmentation, content development and lead generation.
Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in mega panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore.
More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com. For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at http://weblogs.hitwise.com.
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