Based on Hitwise’s finding, “the weekly market share of visits to coupon websites increased 15% from the previous year during the week of Thanksgiving & Black Friday and also increased 16% during the week of Cyber Monday. Overall, visits to the custom category of 70 websites increased 17% and 12%, in November and December, respectively, as compared to the previous year.”

It’s more interesteting that “many shoppers are looking for coupons from a specific retailer or brand, suggesting that many coupon searchers may be further along in the purchasing funnel and are close to making the purchase - but may need some type of final incentive. For the week ending December 27, 2008, 69% of the searches for the top 300 search terms that include ‘coupons’ also included a specific brand such as Pizza Hut, JCPenney, or Target. The other 31% of searches to include the term ‘coupons’ were generic in nature, seeking out grocery coupons, online coupons, and free printable coupons.”

Here is the original Hitwise post

Tags: coupon, deals, shopping

As an active online shopper, I found it interesting to see the overall consumer shopping trends:

• Overall, only 51% of consumers visited a department store this holiday season, compared with 73% who visited Wal-Mart
• nearly 25% of consumers reported that they visited Macy’s less in 2008 than 2007, while only 7% visited Macy’s more
• Nearly 20% of consumers spent more than a year ago, while 54% reported spending less
• For the first time in the nine-year history of the study, the primary driver was price over selection as the reason for why customers changed the store where they purchased
• For the first time in many years, Wal-Mart was more effective in attracting new customers than Target

More data points are from MarketingChart.com

Tags: consumer, shopping, trends