BRC-Google online retail monitor Q4 2011 - 1 in 5 Christmas retail searches on mobile

23 January 2012

Summary

· Total retail search volumes grew 24% in the fourth quarter compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

· The increase was driven by a rise in mobile/tablet search volumes which grew by 169% year-on-year.

· On Christmas Day mobile/tablet searches accounted for 26% of overall retail searches.

· Pre-Christmas searches peaked on 4 December for mobile/tablet devices, and a week earlier, on Monday November 30th, for all online retail searches.

· In the fourth quarter, total searches for food and drink related items had the fastest rate of growth, up 29% year-on-year, while on mobile devices searches grew fastest for homeware products, up by 189% year-on-year.

Stephen Robertson, Director General, British Retail Consortium, said:

“For a fourth successive quarter, the number of retail searches from smartphones and tablets has nearly trebled compared with the previous year. During December, one in five retail searches came from a mobile device and on Christmas Day this increased to more than one in four. Hard-pressed consumers are searching more for bargains and using technology to seek out the best offers. The significant growth in searches from countries such as Brazil and Russia shows the opportunities presented by emerging economies. For many retailers, tapping into these booming consumer markets is an increasingly important strategy for growth.”

Peter Fitzgerald, Retail Director, Google, said:

“Mobile was the standout winner this Christmas with search volumes reaching unprecedented levels, growing from 7 per cent of searches in Q4 2010, to account for over 20 per cent of all retail searches a year later. Even in categories like Consumer Electronics, where growth slowed to just 3 per cent in Q4, mobile/tablet searches were still up an incredible 95 per cent year-on-year. The usage patterns on the different devices are especially interesting. Over Christmas desktop search volumes peaked on Monday December 5th and saw a marked drop thereafter. Mobile/tablet volumes remained consistent later into the month, peaking at the weekends, with many consumers likely to have been searching on their devices while out and about.”

· London continues to drive the highest proportion of retail searches in the UK accounting for 36% of overall searches.

· The proportion of retail searches fell marginally in Wales from 3% in the third quarter to 2% in the fourth quarter.

· Northern Ireland's proportion of retail searches remained at 1% of the UK total despite accounting for 2.8% of the UK population.

· In the fourth quarter of 2011, the numbers of UK consumers searching for overseas retailers rose by 37% compared with the same quarter last year.

· The number of overseas consumers visiting UK based retailers rose 45% in the fourth quarter of 2011 compared with the same time last year, up from 34% in the previous period.

· The map demonstrates the growth in the number of retail related searches generated from emerging markets (Brazil, Russia, India and China.) Russia showed the highest rate of growth from emerging markets growing by 73%, followed by India (+69%), Brazil (63%) and China (26%).

· Developing economies which also demonstrated considerable rates of growth in UK retail searches included Mexico (+304%) and Pakistan (+1245%), while developed markets such as Portugal (+101%), Australia (+66%) and the US (29%) also showed strong signs of growth.

Top 15 Retail Search Terms

(Alphabetical order, Oct to Nov 2011)

barbour jackets

headphones

hunter wellies

ipad

ipod

kindle

lego

nikon 1

nintendo 3ds

party dresses

ps 3

timberland boots

ugg boots

vans

xbox

· Electrical items featured frequently in top searched for products while clothing and games were also popular.

· Cash-strapped consumers were looking for bargains on luxury items and branded goods.

Notes:

The BRC-Google Online Retail Monitor (ORM) measures changes and trends in the growth of retail search terms over time. Every time someone goes online and Googles a retail product, that search is counted towards totals for the month and the quarter in the UK.

For each search query Google assesses how likely it is to be a retail search, based on the history of previous searches for that term, then weights it accordingly.

There are a number of metrics the Monitor measures, for example, the growth of mobile retail searches. These metrics will be reported on a quarterly basis but the overall ORM will also analyse growth rates in particular months.

The mobile measure includes smartphone and tablet searches. The metric which measures pure-online and multi-channel retail search growth is calculated using click through rates of Google Ads.

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