Google Checkout Makes Holiday Shopping Even Faster and Easier This Year

Announcement
November 21, 2006

New Survey Says Forty Percent of Americans Expected to Shop Online From Work This Holiday Season

The Monday after Thanksgiving – Cyber Monday – is expected to draw another record crowd of online shoppers this year, as people log on after spending the holiday weekend fighting the crowds and browsing through stores.

According to a new survey conducted by Harris Interactive and commissioned by Google Checkout, 40% of employed U.S. adults say they’ll be doing at least some of their online holiday shopping from work this year, with 1 in 4 of those shoppers logging on to track down that perfect gift on Monday, November 27 (57% plan to shop during coffee and lunch breaks, while 34% will wait until the end of the workday).

Trying to squeeze online holiday shopping into already busy schedules, shoppers will be looking for even more speed and convenience this year. And while there are many online shopping options to make finding the right gift relatively easy, online shoppers still have to deal with hassles, such as entering billing, shipping, and contact information multiple times as they move from site to site. Google Checkout eliminates an average of 15 steps from the online checkout process, in many cases making checking out as simple as entering a single login. This can save a lot of time for online shoppers, who will visit an average of 5.5 websites for holiday gifts this season, according to the survey.

For the holidays, Google Checkout will also be offering users a variety of promotions for their holiday shopping. Through Tuesday, December 26, users will receive $10 off purchases of $30 or more, or $20 off purchases of $50 or more, depending on the merchant. And best of all, these promotions are reusable, no special registration is necessary, and there are none of the delays that come with rebates – users will automatically see the credits applied as they make their purchases. For example, if users visit an average of five participating websites, they can redeem the promotion on each of those sites and save at least $50 on their holiday shopping.

Since the launch in June, thousands of merchants have added Google Checkout to their sites. So shoppers trying to cross things off their lists will be able to do so quickly and easily on a wide range of sites, including Buy.com, Starbucks Store, The Sports Authority, Ace Hardware, Timberland and many more.

"We understand that more and more holiday shoppers are looking to beat the crowds by heading online to cross items off their list," said Troy Brown, senior director of e-commerce at Timberland.com. "That’s why we’ve partnered with Google Checkout to offer our customers another fast, easy, and secure checkout process to help them take advantage of our online holiday offers."

Shoppers will be able to find participating merchants and special promotions on a new Google Checkout holiday site (checkout.google.com/holiday) that will be launching on Cyber Monday. The site will provide information on the promotion and offer gift ideas in the most sought-after categories this year – which, according to the survey, include clothing, gift certificates, toys, electronics, DVDs, and music.

If you’d like to learn more about the survey results, the Google Checkout holiday site and promotions, or the ways that Checkout makes online shopping faster and more convenient, you can visit checkout.google.com/holiday on Cyber Monday, November 27.

Survey Methodology

Harris Interactive® fielded the study on behalf of Google from November 7-9, 2006, via its QuickQuery℠ online omnibus, among 2,559 U.S. adults age 18 and over, including 1,639 who are employed and 655 who plan to do online holiday shopping at work. Data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and propensity to be online. Select data were weighted to be representative of the total U.S. online adult population on the basis of region, age within gender, education, household income, race/ethnicity, and amount of time spent online.

With a pure probability sample of 2,559, one could say with a ninety-five percent probability that the overall results would have a sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points. Sampling error for data based on sub-samples would be higher and would vary. However, that does not take other sources of error into account. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

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