Shoppers go online for holidays, to shop for clothes

When it comes to choosing holiday destinations and MP3 players, New Zealanders increasingly turn to the internet.

But they buy clothes and jewellery through seeing them in shop windows and they buy the weight loss products their friends recommend, according to a poll carried out by market research company AC Neilson.

The global survey, carried out in May and June, quizzed about 22,780 internet users in 41 different countries on how, why and what they buy.

For most things, prior experience was a heavy influence on New Zealanders choosing what they bought, especially when it came to banks (59 per cent), mobile phones (50 per cent) and cars (47 per cent).

Sixty-six per cent of people buying clothes and 61 per cent of those buying jewellery cited seeing the item in a shop window as an influence.

Almost half of the New Zealanders polled said they bought cars based on the brand, compared to 36 per cent of car-buyers globally.

Overall, New Zealanders took notice of what they saw on television and read in newspapers and magazines when deciding what to buy -- much more so than the rest of the world.

New Zealanders were still reluctant to choose purchases based solely on what they saw on the internet, the company said.

However, the poll did highlight the growing importance of the internet when looking for things to buy, the company's managing director, Stephen Mitchell, said.

"Today, an internet presence isn't 'nice to have', it's a commercial necessity. It's where the majority of global customers will make up their minds about a purchase," he said.

- NZPA