LONDON - July 21, 2021 — Amazon UK searches for sports and outdoor equipment are up significantly this summer compared to a year ago, suggesting Britons are embracing the heatwave and gearing up for a season of ‘staycation’ activities like camping, hiking, trips to the beach and fun in the back garden.
Research from global eCommerce analytics firm Profitero shows that searches for camping stoves and walking poles are up more than double on last July, while those for walking boots have more than tripled. Searches for air tents and beach bags are up 91% and 87% respectively, while pogo sticks are up 123%.
Amazon search data can be an early predictor of future sales. When the number of Amazon searches for a product rises steeply, sales of the product typically follow.*1
Profitero managing director EMEA & APAC Mark Wilkinson adds: “The prevailing thinking until recently was that consumers would have stocked up on summer outdoor items last year, but our findings suggest otherwise. Faced with international travel restrictions, rising Covid infections and a domestic heatwave, we’re seeing UK shoppers hungry for staycation products and equipment. We may be in the second summer of restrictions, but the data points towards a lot of new purchasing happening.”
How will Britons spend the ‘Great Staycation’?
Amazon UK searches, this summer vs. last summer, selected categories
But as demand for staycation products increases, shoppers are likely to face higher prices as supply struggles to keep up.
Profitero also tracked the prices on approximately 600 top-rated sports and outdoor-related products at three major UK retailers — Amazon, Argos and Sports Direct — and found, on average, that Amazon’s prices are 8% cheaper than Sports Direct online, and 11% cheaper than Argos.*2
Profitero’s Wilkinson again: “This price difference between retailers is quite sizeable and suggests to us that Amazon wants to compete aggressively and play to win in the sports and outdoors categories, particularly while shoppers are planning staycations.
“For consumers though, Amazon’s price aggression will be welcome news and reinforces the sage advice to shop around for deals.”
Notes
*1 Profitero research of a typical consumer goods category in July 2021 showed a strong mathematical correlation (around 80%) between Amazon search trends and subsequent sales.
*2 Each day, Profitero monitors prices and other data for millions of product pages on hundreds of unique retailer sites. For this study, Profitero analysed daily prices collected over a two-week period (to 15 June 2021) at Amazon.co.uk, Argos and Sports Direct across approximately 600 top-rated products, representing sports and outdoor categories. Only identical in-stock items in the same pack configuration were compared. Prices for the same items were collected within 24 hours of each other to ensure validity of the comparisons.
In addition, Profitero found that Amazon was cheaper than Argos 63% of the time and cheaper than Sports Direct 60% of the time.
About Profitero
Profitero is the platform Adidas, L’Oreal, General Mills and 4,000 other brands use to accelerate their eCommerce sales. In fact, brands that use Profitero are able to grow their Amazon sales 70 percent faster than category competitors, on average. Using Profitero’s proprietary technology and algorithms, brands can optimize their 4Ps (Product, Placement, Price and Promotions) across hundreds of retailer sites and 50 countries while also uncovering what competitors are doing to win online. For more, visit www.profitero.com/