Dart’s data--the Smart TV issue

Regular readers will be familiar with our free newsletter DC’s TV Shopping Week, which focuses on the world of online video, connected TVs and DRTV.

This week’s Dart’s Data also pays tribute to the discipline of TV, taking a look at recent reports examining the impact of smart TVs on retailers in the future.

According to an eBay-commissioned study carried out by Conlumino, one in four (25 percent) of people will regularly use interactive TV to shop by the end of 2014, generating direct sales worth an estimated £750 million. Smart devices also ranked as one of the top five predicted influential technologies for retail, alongside augmented reality, smart devices and image recognition.

WorldPay's recently launched its Global Online Shopper Report, a study of 19,000 e-shoppers globally, supports these findings, noting that 5 percent of global shoppers have already purchased online using a next generation interactive TV. The study found that 21 percent of respondents own an internet-ready TV and of those who do, 24 percent have used it to purchase goods and services. The highest users were e-shoppers in India (63 percent), Brazil (39 percent) and China (33 percent). The study also found that smart-device usage is particularly high among “heavy spenders”--those who have spent 30 percent of their disposable income online in the past year. Globally, 55 percent of heavy spenders have used a smartphone and 67 percent a tablet in the last three months to buy online.

Only one third (37 percent) of Britons that are planning to buy a Smart TV said that connecting to the internet through it was a factor in buying one, according to a YouGov survey of the nation’s TV habits. The most common reason for intending to buy a Smart TV is to just have a more up-to-date TV set (50 percent), while the most important feature of Smart TVs amongst respondents who already own one is picture quality (96 percent of owners) followed by the size of the screen (93 percent), then sound quality (89 percent). Highlighting that more consumer education is needed in this area, only half (53 percent) of Smart TV owners correctly identified a Smart TV as one that directly connects to the internet without the need of another device; while one in four (25 percent) of Smart TV owners have never used it to connect to the internet.

If you have a report, study or whitepaper then email jamesd@catalog-biz.com.

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