Christmas shoppers already searching online

Australian and New Zealand shoppers are already surfing the net for Christmas gift ideas, according to internet search engine Google. Retailers have been urged to increase their online visibility to take advantage of the early surge. Ross McDonald, Google's Sydney-based retail industry marketing manager, says 50 per cent of shoppers now research their purchases on the internet before visiting stores. He told the Retailers Association annual conference last week that early bird Christmas shoppers begin surfing the net about now. "In September it's not a huge amount of people, but that's when they start and it builds from there." Google was surprised to see the high percentage of people using the internet for shopping research, he added. It had thought the figure would be about 20 per cent. The results indicated that online increasingly needed to be part of a retailer's marketing mix. The first thing retail operators should do was Google their brand name to make sure people could find them, their stores and their information, he said. Another tool was Google's Insights for Search, which showed when people were searching, for what, and in what regions.

Monday, 7 September 2009

 

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