New research shows that the current economic situation may have a silver lining for etailers - although 64% of respondents said that the economic climate would force them to reduce their overall spending, 56% said that they would continue to shop online as much as they are already, while some will even spend more.
The report, by E-consultancy, also looks at the importance of price, user-reviews and recommendations for consumers when online shopping.
Responses show that price comparison sites are becoming more important - the report suggests that retailers should be submitting their product feeds to price comparison engines to take advantage of this - and that user-reviews are also of growing importance, particularly to the younger market (72% of the 25-34 age group said they would be more likely to read online reviews, the figure for over 55s was 53%).
Matthew Tod, one of the authors of the report, commented "We can see from this report that silver surfers are not into social media or comparison engines and are intending to spend more as the downturn does not touch them. But on the other hand a whole group of more financially pressed people now use social media to make decisions and then comparison engines to find the best deal. Complexity rules and simple strategies will fail if online retailers don't understand this."