Crowd Science Survey: Print Beats Social Media As Preferred Method of Finding Holiday Shopping Deals

From MarketingCharts.org: full story here

Print Beats SocNets for ’11 Holiday Deal-Seekers

Print (15%) proved a far more popular way to find holiday shopping deals in 2011 than Facebook (3%) or Twitter (1%), according to
a survey released in January 2012 by Crowd Science. The largest
proportion of respondents said that visiting companies’ websites (24%)
was their favorite way to find deals, although the same proportion said
they had no preferred method. Email newsletters were cited by 13% of
respondents, ahead of talking with friends and family (9%) and online
flyers (5%).

Online Not the Preferred Purchase Channel

Although 23% of the consumers surveyed said they preferred to conduct
all of their holiday shopping online, they were outweighed by the
proportion (35%) that did not prefer to do so. Those aged 24 or younger
were less inclined to prefer online shopping for the holidays, as
compared to older shoppers.

Additionally, 1 in 5 respondents cited an anxiety about security when
buying online. The concern over online safety was more pronounced among
lighter internet users (less than 24 hours per week) compared to their
more experienced counterparts.

1 in 5 Shoppers Procrastinated

17% of respondents admitted to doing nearly all of their holiday
shopping at the last minute. Among the 43% who denied being last-minute
shoppers, women were more prominent than men (51% vs. 38%). According to
survey results released in December 2011 by PriceGrabber, , with men more likely than women to do so (11% vs. 8%).

Other Findings:

• Only 15% of respondents to the Crowd Science survey said that the
  holidays are their favorite time to shop in person, compared to 47% who
  disagreed. The negative sentiment was more pronounced as time
  progressed, with disagreement climbing from 45% before Thanksgiving to
  49% as the holidays approached.
• 4 in 10 anticipated spending about the same amount during the
  holidays as they had the year before. Those who indicated they would
  spend less traced more to lower income households. As the holiday season
  progressed, the study found a 5% point increase in those anticipating
  spending more: the week of Thanksgiving, 17% said they would spend more,
  rising to 22% as the Christmas holiday drew closer.

About the Data: The Crowd Science findings were gathered
from a random sample of 1,756 respondents from November 16-28, 2011, and
3,545 respondents from November 29-December 29, 2011.