Halloween shopping trends unpicked

Tuesday, October 4, 2016 - 09:07 by Mike Price

The rise of Halloween as a legitimate event in the UK has been swift in recent years, in part as a result of the globalising force of the internet. So it is no surprise to see more people searching for products to help them prepare for the spookiest day of the year to buy via safe shopping online.

Figures published by auction site eBay reveal that in the month before Halloween in 2015, a total of 1.2 million individual searches for items relating to this keyword were made on its e-commerce site and mobile apps. On top of this total, half a million users looked for Halloween costumes specifically, showing that people are increasingly keen to get into the spirit of the day.

Every day during the period covered by the report, more than 2,000 people in the over-60 age category searched for products related to Halloween. This demonstrates both the spending power of silver surfers and the fact that this event has become a generation-spanning attraction.

People in their 40s were more likely than any other age group to look up fancy dress costumes specifically designed for adults. So while plenty of people use sites like eBay to carry out safe shopping online and buy items aimed at kids, Halloween is not exclusively aimed at appealing to those who are too young to be able to buy anything from the web themselves.

Another advantage of Halloween is the timing, as it comes at the start of the period of the retail calendar during which people are starting to stock up for Christmas. So e-commerce sites are able to win over new customers and attract them with seasonal offers which will, ideally, lead to them sticking around to make more purchases a little later in the year.