Online CE Purchases Up 16% in Year Ended in May Amid Phone-Product Interest, Says NPD

Hours before the 3 p.m. EDT start of Amazon Prime Day (see 1807160059), NPD reported that its Checkout receipt-mining service found online consumer tech dollar purchases jumped 16 percent in the 12 months ended May from the same period a year earlier. E-commerce shopping “continues to increase across the consumer electronics landscape,” said NPD Monday. The average spending per purchase declined 7 percent year over year, “indicating that while more purchases are being completed online, these transactions are increasingly from categories that have items with lower average selling prices,” it said. NPD estimates 43 percent of the U.S. adult online-buying population made at least one consumer tech product purchase in the 12 months ended May, an increase of six percentage points from a year earlier, it said. Mobile phone accessories (22 percent) were the most popular items purchased, followed by portable audio (18 percent) and portable chargers (13 percent). “Growing online purchase frequency, especially of lower priced ‘grab and go’ items such as phone cases, screen protectors, portable chargers, and wired headphones, is shifting customer traffic from in-store to online,” said Stephen Baker, NPD vice president-industry adviser. “This shift is why today’s retailers focus on driving consumers into the store for big ticket, highly interactive purchases like TVs, where a benefit can be seen to shopping in a physical store, and allowing the online channel to focus on more transactional consumer interactions.”