Social Media impacts holiday shopping
Posted Nov 26, 2011 04:23:51 AM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
More Canadians are taking to the world wide web to peruse store shelves this holiday season then ever before.
Research done by eBay finds that 40 per cent of Canadian shoppers are expected to do some or all of their holiday shopping online this year, that’s 11 per cent higher than last year.
As well the online shopping site suggests that, this Sunday, November 27th will be Canada’s busiest online shopping day of 2011.
Karl Allen-Muncey is the founder of Kitchener’s CuteGecko, a graphic design agency.
He tells 570 News it’s easy to see why 2 in 5 Canadians are doing some or all of their shopping online this year.
“Essentially, through the use of media like Facebook and Twitter, people are swapping and changing stories a lot more readily,” says Allen-Muncey.
Also changing the shopping landscape are sites like Groupon and Living Social, which Allen-Muncey says has made it even easier to get information on deals sent straight to your inbox: “Whether it be shopping or holiday travel, people are using these types of sites in conjunction with their social circles to make more valid decisions.”
In addition, more of us are using smartphones and tablets to do our holiday bidding.
eBay expects that items bought from BlackBerry’s and iPhone’s will increase by 224 per cent from last year with around eight items bought every minute using a mobile device.
According to Allen-Muncey people are creating more content in terms of photo’s and inviting people to events than ever before: “For example, people can take a photo of a product using a smartphone and post it directly to Facebook or Twitter. Sharing these photos is actually incentivizing others to make the same decisions as their influential circle.”
According to the eBay research 71 per cent of Canadians says they shop online because it can be done anytime and 14 per cent admit that they like shopping online because it can be done at work.
