HITWISE UK  CHRISTMAS SHOPPING UPDATE #4

Lingerie popular among young men, with searches for ‘lingerie’ doubling in last 2 months

London, 14^th December 2005
It would appear that UK shoppers are leaving more of their Christmas shopping to the last minute this year with the latest analysis from Hitwise, the leader in online competitive intelligence, revealing that visits to the Hitwise UK Shopping & Classifieds category reached a new peak of 14.85% of all internet visits last week. While the week-on-week increase was less than 1%, at this time last year visits were already in decline. The retail sub-categories responsible for driving that growth were Flowers and Gifts, with a 9% week–on-week increase, Intimate Apparel & Accessories with an 8% increase, and Music with a 6% growth.

“The growth in visits to Intimate Apparel & Accessories websites seems to be a result of last minute shopping for lingerie”, said Heather Hopkins, Director of Research for Hitwise UK. “Lingerie is a highly seasonal product with the share of searches for ‘lingerie’ surging in the lead-up to Christmas and Valentine’s Day. Searches for ‘lingerie’ have more than doubled since early October.”

Intimate wear seems to be a popular last minute gift, with visits to Figleaves, the most visited site in the category, peaking the week ending 25th December last year. This year, many online retailers are promising on-time delivery for orders received on or before 22^nd December.

Lingerie Popular with Young Men

Visitors to the Intimate Apparel & Accessories category were 8% more likely to be male and 13% more likely to be under the age of 34 in the past four weeks. The Experian Mosaic Lifestyle Groups that are best represented on Intimate Apparel & Accessories sites (relative to the online population) are Happy Families, “Families with focus on career and home, mostly younger age groups now raising children”, Urban Intelligence, “Young, single and mostly well-educated, these people are cosmopolitan in tastes and liberal in attitudes”, and Symbols of Success, “People with rewarding careers who live in sought after locations, affording luxuries and premium quality products”.

“This demographic and lifestyle profile indicates that visitors to Intimate Apparel & Accessories sites are purchasing lingerie for young wives and girlfriends” said Hopkins. “Visitors are also likely to be teenagers buying gifts for friends and girlfriends.”

Different Online Marketing Strategies

Hitwise Search Intelligence reveals that Ann Summers enjoys the strongest online brand recognition among sites within the Intimate Apparel & Accessories category, and it seems that the 12% increase in visits to www.annsummers.co.uk last week was a result of searches for the brand. The share of searches for ‘ann summers’ increased 18% last week, whilst the share of searches for ‘anne summers’ increased by 26%. Last week there were three times as many searches for ‘ann summers’ than for ‘la senza’ and five times more than for ‘figleaves’. Ann Summers received 51% of its visits from search engines in this period and more than 80% of those visits were a result of searches for the brand. 27 of the top 30 terms sending visits to the site in the four weeks ending 10th December 2005 included some variation of the brand name.

Figleaves’ online marketing mix is quite different from that of Ann Summers’. The site receives only 28% of its visits from search engines and is much less reliant on searches for its brand to drive website visits. Nine of the top 30 terms sending visits to Figleaves were related to its brand and account for less than 25% of the visits from search. Instead, Figleaves is much stronger on generic product terms, such as ‘lingerie’, ‘nightwear’, and ‘sexy sets’. This is supported by the fact that there were 2,286 different search terms sending visits to Figleaves in the four weeks ending 10^th December 2005, compared with 645 terms for Ann Summers and 497 terms for La Senza.

Figleaves makes up the shortfall through partnerships, with Wow Woman!, Boots and Easy Bras among the top sites sending visits through to Figleaves for the week ending 10^th December 2005.

Sign Up For the Hitwise Analyst Weblog

In addition to the UK Christmas Shopping Series 2005 weekly instalments, Heather Hopkins will provide further retail analyses via her weblog at http://weblogs.hitwise.com/heather-hopkins/. 

Weekly Market Share of UK Visits to Shopping & Classifieds Websites September 2004 – December 2005

Top 20 Shopping & Classifieds websites rank by UK visits, week ending 10th December 2005

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.

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