Comscore has conducted a study into the online behaviour of UK “mums”, defined as females between the ages of 25 and 54 with children present in the household, and found that although they spend as much time online as the average consumer, they spend more of that time on retail sites than the average.
“The intensity of internet usage amongst mums was consistent with the average internet user, who spent an average of 27.3 hours online and made an average of 53.1 visits per visitor in June,” says Comscore. “However, an analysis of the top site categories visited by this demographic revealed a strong predilection for retailer sites. In fact, six of the ten highest indexing categories among this group were retail categories, led by the Toys category, which they were 32 percent more likely than average to visit. Retail — Fragrances/Cosmetics ranked second (30 percent higher than average), followed by the Kids Entertainment (28 percent), Shipping (26 percent) and Retail — Food (19 percent) categories.”
Of the 4.6 million mums who went online in June, 3.6 million visited an online retail site, giving a reach of 77 percent. The most popular retail destination was Amazon with 1.5 million visitors, followed by Home Retail Group properties — owner of Argos and Homebase — with 970,000 visitors, Tesco with 700,000 visitors, and Shop Direct Group, which includes Littlewoods, with 610,000 visitors.
“Mums in the UK not only spend a great deal of time online each month, but they also control the purse strings for many families,” says Mike Read, SVP and managing director at Comscore Europe. “It’s clear from their heavy visitation of retail sites that mums represent an important shopping segment, so it is critical for marketers and retailers to understand how to reach this audience online and influence their spending behaviour — both online and offline.”
