Survey: Intoxication, social media drive online purchases

By: Trademagazin editor Date: 2022. 09. 09. 12:46

At least one major driver of consumer e-commerce behavior is largely out of retailers’ control. According to a new survey of over 1,000 regular online shoppers from personal finance membership group SoFi, a majority (53%) of respondents admit they haven’t been sober when making an online purchase.

Intoxicated shopping is common online

Men are more likely to shop while intoxicated than women, with 60% saying they’d shopped online while not sober, compared to 40% of women who said the same. When looking at age groups, millennials (60%) are most likely to shop while not sober, and boomers (37%) are the least likely to do so.

In general, the survey indicates that impulse purchases make up a good amount of total e-commerce volume. More than half (56%) of respondents said that more than half of their online purchases are impulse buys. Comparing age groups, millennials are the most impulsive online shoppers, with 63% of these respondents saying their online purchases are not planned. But of all surveyed age groups, Gen Z had the highest percentage of respondents who said none of their online purchases are impulse buys (12%). Boomers, at 10%, were a close second.

Other interesting findings include:

Thirty-nine percent of respondents are shopping online the same amount since stores reopened, while 37% are shopping online more and 24% are shopping online less.
Thirty-seven percent of surveyed women and 29% of surveyed men spend $100 or less online shopping while 25% of men and 17% of women spend $500 or more.
Two-thirds of respondents (65%) place three or more orders on Amazon each month. And 16% place more than five Amazon orders every month.
The top reasons to regret an online purchase are it looked better on-screen than in real life (26%) and spending too much money (22%).
Close to half (48%) of respondents get online grocery deliveries at least once per week. Only 24% get online grocery deliveries less than once per month.

Intoxicated shopping – some sobering figures

Another survey of over 1,000 U.S. adults, from CouponChief, confirms the prevalence of intoxicated shopping. 70% of respondents admitted to making at least one online purchase since the start of the pandemic while drunk or stoned. Men (76%) were more likely to shop online intoxicated than women (46%). Amazon (69%) was more commonly used for online shopping while intoxicated than Walmart, eBay, and Target combined (67%).

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