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Christmas Ebay Online Shopping

August will see the start of the Christmas shopping craze, eBay warns

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By Ishbel Macleod | PR and social media consultant

July 26, 2014 | 2 min read

Christmas may be months away, but shopping for the holiday season will begin in August, eBay was predicted, with over 2.7m searches for “Christmas” being made in August 2013.

This comes as part of the 71m searches that used the keyword “Christmas” between 1 August and 24 December.

Pauline Robson, director at MediaCom Real World Insight, stated: “By tapping into online insights, brands can make their campaigns even more effective at a time of the year when everyone is vying for share of wallet. Identifying shoppers at different stages of the gifting cycle allows brands to be more relevant. Brands and planners should not assume that all shoppers are the same. By segmenting audiences based on observed behaviour brands can make sure they are in front of the shopper at the right time, with the right messages.”

However, online retailers should not focus all their efforts on August: eBay also saw over two million searches that included the keyword “Christmas” in the final week before the big day.

Of these, there were half a million searches for ‘handbags’ and over 30,000 searches for ‘Monopoly’ on eBay.co.uk in the final seven days before Christmas.

“The advantage of marrying observed purchase behaviour with contextual insights is that brands can identify 'Long-listers' and 'Grab-a-gifters' and segment them from traditional audiences. This allows tailored messages to be delivered to the right person at the right time and in the right context. For those that start searching early, inspiration and reassurance is key while messages around availability and delivery will generally resonate better with last-minute gifters. By being more selective and aligned with shopper behaviour in this way brands can outmanoeuvre their competitors, improve ROI and reduce campaign wastage,” commented Phuong Nguyen, director of eBay Advertising in the UK.

Christmas Ebay Online Shopping

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