PriceGrabber.com Holiday Shopping Survey Reveals Increasing Consumer Reliance on Online Shopping; Respondents Expect to Conduct 50 Percent of Their Holiday Shopping Online and Spend an Average of $1,025 This Season

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 2, 2005--PriceGrabber.com, a leading online comparison shopping service with 18 million unique monthly users, announced the results of their 2005 survey of online shoppers. An astounding 93 percent of respondents agreed that they expect to shop and buy more online this year than last year. The survey found that 46 percent of respondents will shop online more this holiday compared to previous years specifically because of higher gasoline prices.

Online shoppers also expect to dedicate high percentages of their holiday buying online, saying they expect to do 50 percent of their shopping online. The average budget for holiday shopping is a robust $1,025 and the majority of respondents said they expected to spend about the same as last year.

Shoppers Starting Early, Shopping Late

The survey results surprisingly show that over 40 percent of shoppers started their holiday shopping in October, and despite this apparent trend towards starting early, 73 percent still admitted they expect to be doing gift shopping up to five days before the holiday.

Convenience Key in Driving Holiday Shoppers Online

Top three reasons consumers most enjoy shopping online for the holidays:

-- Convenience: Eliminate hassle of driving/crowds (36 percent)

-- Flexibility: Shop 24 hours of the day (33 percent)

-- Bargains: Finding the low prices (19 percent)

Top three reasons consumers dislike holiday shopping:

-- Inconvenience: Waiting in lines (30 percent)

-- Selection: Finding the right selection of gifts for everyone (28 percent)

-- Time: Lack of time to get it all done (20 percent)

Before Purchasing, Offline Shoppers Will Research Heavily Online

In addition to the survey showing that shoppers expect to do more of their actual buying online, 88 percent of respondents stated they would spend "substantial time researching products and prices online before making offline purchases." And employers might take note, 42 percent of respondents reported they plan to use work hours to shop online for the holiday. Interestingly when asked who they will be buying gifts for this season, nearly as many respondents indicated for their pets, and they did for co-workers.

Survey Methodology

This holiday shopping survey was conducted by PriceGrabber.com North America Marketing Research in October 2005. The survey ran from October 12 through October 19, 2005. It was administered online among a random sample of individuals. The total sample size was 3,012 respondents, 1,045 females and 1,967 males. The confidence interval for all results is 95 percent with a margin of error of approximately +/-3 percentage points for the entire sample.

About PriceGrabber.com

PriceGrabber is a leading provider of online comparison shopping services that allows millions of consumers to search and compare information about products, services, merchants and sellers in order to make an educated purchase decision. Through continued innovation and consistent focus on providing the best comparison shopping experience on the Internet, PriceGrabber has established itself as one of the most trusted and effective online destinations for savvy shopping. By using PriceGrabber, shoppers can instantly find and compare millions of unique products and services from thousands of merchants and sellers in 22 product and service channels, thereby enabling users to find the right product/service from the right merchant/seller at the best price. Millions of online shoppers have saved considerable time and money by making PriceGrabber an integral part of their shopping process. The company also powers comparison shopping functionality for a network of leading Internet sites, including MSN Shopping, AskJeeves, About.com and Comcast, thus providing millions of users across these sites access to the PriceGrabber comparison shopping solution. The company offers comparison shopping in English (at www.pricegrabber.com), Spanish (at www.preciomania.com) and Portuguese (at www.precomania.com) as well as international sites in Canada and the United Kingdom. PriceGrabber is headquartered in Los Angeles.

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