People travelling for business more likely to shop online

Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - 12:14 by Simon Crisp

Anyone who travels for business is also likely to be a big fan of shopping online, according to a recent study published by ADARA.

Compared to the average consumer, a business traveller is almost four times as likely to have spent around £600 or more through e-commerce services over the last half-year, the report found.

Furthermore, analysts were able to determine that business travellers are interested in credit card deals that let them get rewards when they make online purchases, with 40 per cent of respondents saying that they like to adopt new technologies earlier than mainstream consumers.

Three quarters of business travellers questioned said that, in the past month, they have made a purchase of a luxury product via safe shopping online, which in combination with their interest in tech, means that they tend to make high value purchases.

This also leads into the idea that people who are commuting, travelling or otherwise moving from place to place, without much else to do, will use their smartphones, tablets and laptops to browse e-commerce sites to pass the time, often leading to purchases.

Retailers are benefitting significantly from being able to engage with consumers via mobile sites and apps, because this means that even when people are not actually able to get to a physical store, they can still buy products, browse items and place orders.

Business travellers seem to be a particularly good target for e-commerce because the nature of their lifestyle makes them ideal candidates for being sucked into the world of online shopping. With lots of downtime and lots of disposable income, this group may even be lured away from duty free shops and into the value-oriented market for online shopping, where prices are generally much lower.