Online Bargain Hunters

There is no doubt that online shopping is catching on in the UK Internet community. In a recent online survey carried out by SKOPOS (Institute for Market and Communications Research) on 1,900 members of its Euro-Panel they investigated whether, when it comes to getting a bargain, online shoppers are making the best use of the resources offered on the Internet.

Despite a high visibility on and off the Net, people seem apprehensive about using online auction sites. For almost every auction site SKOPOS mentioned, over half the respondents (61 per cent on average) claimed never to have used them. Best performer was Ebay.co.uk with 19.8 per cent of those questioned using the site on a regular basis.

Price comparison sites on the other hand are proving a popular method for finding the best deals, with over 64 per cent of respondents having used one or more such sites. SKOPOS questioned them on what they perceived to be three of the online price comparison site market leaders: Pricerunner.com, Kelkoo.com and Dealtime.co.uk (and indeed, only 18 per cent of the price comparison site users had never used any of these).

  • In terms of numbers of those who had visited the sites, both Pricerunner and Kelkoo performed strongly, with the latter showing a slight edge.

  • Those who claimed to have used more than one of the three sites again showed a slight preference for Kelkoo, although interestingly almost a third of this multi-site using group expressed no loyalty whatsoever to any one site in particular.

  • Dealtime, meanwhile, though attracting less visitors than its two competitors showed a higher frequency of use.

  • Of course this is offset against the fact that across the board the vast majority of price comparison site visitors use the sites monthly or less frequently.

About SKOPOS

SKOPOS (Institute for Market and Communications Research) is an international market research institute. A part of the dooyoo group, it operates in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. Whilst offering traditional research, SKOPOS specialises in online methodologies, particularly through the use of its 36,000 member Euro-Panel.

http://www.skopos-mr.co.uk


Tel: 020 8747 4506
Fax: 020 8747 2089

If you want further information on the Euro-Panel, mail Claire van den Ring at info@skopos-mr.co.uk