The Wilkinet Survey – The voice of the consumer
Published: 01 June, 2007 in Nursery Industry Magazine, for more information visit: http://www.nursery-industry.co.uk/news/search.php?_FB%5Bq%5D=wilkinet
The most important customer in our industry is, of course the parent. However there is another group of people with different needs - but with attractive spending power… the 'gift buyers.'
When we recruit people into our surveys we ask some qualification questions - we want to make sure we're just talking to the most relevant people: pregnant women (or their partners) and parents of young children. Anyone who doesn't fall into our key target profile gets filtered into gift buying questions. Most of the people who answer this section are women, covering a broad range of ages, incomes and family situations.
So how big is the baby gift market?
Combining a few sources of information the answer can be simply summarised as: 'Huge!'
Nearly everyone we spoke with (92%) say they buy gifts for friends or family, and on average they spend around £25 each time (a few spend a lot more than this of course). On the three main search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) there's an estimated 115,000 searches for 'baby gift' every month in the UK. Google returns 2.25 million pages for 'baby gift' (and that's restricting it to searching for websites in the UK).
With this hive of activity online it may surprise you that less that 1 in 3 of the people (30%) we spoke to buy their baby gifts by mail order (either online of from a catalogue).
Most people go to a national retailer like Mothercare or Toys'R'Us to buy their gifts (82%) with just over a third (35%) saying Independent nursery shops are one of the places they visit when gift shopping.
There are two clear areas where most gift money gets spent:
Clothes (92%) and Toys (65%). Bedding, blankets and towelling are also an important area. The traditional priority items like pushchairs and car seats are less than 15% each.
Clothes and Toys are categories some independent shops choose to ignore. With restrictions on resources and space, this is understandable. However, with such a strong focus from the gift buyers it may be an area to reconsider if you haven't previously. Some smaller retailers choose to focus almost entirely on these areas and become a regular destination for grandparents, friends and co-workers on the hunt for a gift. If your main staple is the larger items you could instead consider what some independent shops choose to do, which is to stock just one specific brand of clothing or toy. This offers a level of exclusivity to your range and avoids the problem of too many line items.
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A very interesting look at the baby gift market. Very helpful to our efforts, even though your figures are for the UK. We are in the US, but I would suspect the search numbers are proportional. The estimate of 1-out-of-three orders by mail bodes well for us, as online marketers. We offer personalized signs that accent the nursery décor. Neither clothing or toys, they still are proving popular since they are something children cannot outgrow. In addition, personalized baby gifts are always treasured.
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