Family Shopping Trends this year and last

We all know that the internet is slowly becoming more and more prevalent in our everyday life, but is it really affecting how we shop? Not too long ago people didn’t start their holiday shopping until December actually rolled around, however how recent reports have shown that consumers are starting their holiday shopping and early as May and over one third of us are getting our shopping started before the month of September as of 2010!While spending has started early, there is also a spike in the frequency and amount of high value shopping online. In 2009 there were only three days that produced online sales of over a billion dollars, but in 2010 the sales went up and there were six days that generated over a billion dollars in online sales. There is this stigma that spending has decreased over the last couple of years, but there has been a massive increase in holiday sales online, it just gets over looked because in store volume of people has decreased.When people go shopping the stores they must be disconnected from the internet then right? Wrong. Over half of the shoppers in the United States used their smartphones to get more information about the product they were buying in the store, so even when we go shopping we can’t leave the internet out of it! In the past few years because of a down economy Coupons have really exploded in popularity. Even online stores started offering coupons and promos for additional savings. The most popular Coupons we have found are TOMS Coupons, Kohls Coupon, Zulily Coupon Code, and Crocs Coupon. In the same vein, many people are researching their buying options before they go in stores to decide what would be the best value for their money. Over half of consumers said that they have used the internet before buying something in stores, and these persons admitted that it was the ability to know more about what they were buying that made them feeling like not only consumers, but smart connected consumer who had a leg up on stores, because they came in armed with information on what they needed.With the release of websites such as Groupon and living social, people find that they are spending even more money to save! Persons are often blinded buy an amazing discount that they fail to see that the money that they are planning to now spend is money that they wouldn’t have spent in the first place. The coupon websites make consumers feel like they are saving more money than they normal would, which in most cases they are, but in doing the consumer fails to realize they are willing to spend more to save more, and that is how the companies get the leg up and make money on their sales!
It would seem that the speculation that spending is decreasing, especially with the current economy, are not true – at least when it comes to holiday spending. With the recovering state that our economy is currently in, we can only expect that the spending at the holidays will continue to increase! With the technology that the average consumer can now access on their phones or computers, it makes sense that spending is going up. Based on the culmination of all this information it is likely safe to say that as information becomes more accessible to consumers, they become more and more willing to spend money.