I-Link Research Solutions Releases Results of 2013 Christmas Shopping Study

Online, November 25, 2013 (Newswire.com) - The results of the i-Link Research 2013 Christmas Shopping Poll suggests it will be another year of considered spending by Australian consumers this festive season.

The research, conducted in October 2013, explores the attitudes and intentions of Australians about Christmas shopping. A total of 553 respondents from i-Link's consumer market research panel, LiveTribe, were interviewed for the study with the sample drawn representatively to match the national distribution for age, gender and location in Australia.

i-Link Business Manager John Leahy said that while economic outlook might make consumers wary, the Christmas retail rush will be inevitable as shoppers seek out the best bargains they can find online and in-stores.

"The research shows that price remains the biggest deciding factor in purchase decisions for most, but overall shopping experience also has a strong influence given the amount of choice and abundance of information that consumers have available to them," Mr. Leahy said.

Some of the key findings from the research include:

• More than half of the respondents (54%) said that crowds are what they dislike most about Christmas shopping. However only a small portion (6%) are planning to do all of their shopping online. About a quarter (26%) will only shop in-store, while sixty percent (60%) will combine the best of both worlds.

• Many consumers turn to the internet when looking for shopping information and two of their biggest reasons for doing so are to compare prices (60%), and to access discounts and special deals (51%).

• The most popular product categories for presents this year are gift cards or vouchers (54%), clothing and fashion accessories (40%), and toys or games (38%).

• More than half of the respondents (57%) expect to spend the same amount on shopping this year as they did last Christmas, with fifteen percent (15%) expecting to actually spend more.

• Overall the majority of Australians (65%) expect that their total Christmas shopping spend for this year will be less than one thousand dollars.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded at: http://i-linkresearch.com/news.html?pid=924.

About i-Link Research Solutions
i-Link Research is Australia's leading independent provider of field services and research technology for online market and social research. We provide clients with a full suite of online research services including, project set up and management, survey scripting and deployment, recruitment, data collection, analysis and reporting.

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