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Workers shop Net until they clock out
A survey finds 46 percent of online shopping occurs at work, but Thanksgiving, when nearly everyone is home, is again the busiest online shopping day.
By TOM ZUCCO
Published December 20, 2005
Kris Hayse is an office manager and travel agent at St. Petersburg Travel Center. Sometimes, when she's on hold with an airline, instead of staring into space she'll wander onto the Internet and look for Christmas presents.
The owners of the travel agency know she's doing it, and don't mind.
"I can't leave my desk," she said. "What do I do? I'm on hold with airlines a lot."
Here's something supervisors, managers and business owners everywhere will be happy to know: Hayse has lots of company. According to Nielsen/Net Ratings, 46 percent of online holiday shopping takes place at work.
Another survey, this one by the National Retail Federation, found that 36.5 percent of consumers say they will browse for or buy gifts this year through computers at work.
So stick computers in front of a group of employees and give them Internet access, and nearly half of them will spend at least some time mining eBay, Amazon.com or some other Web site.
This, of course, can create some serious productivity issues.
Issues that Boston-based Circles, a provider of concierge and personal assistance services, thinks it can address.
Circles offers its concierge services to businesses - Yahoo, Aramark, Prudential Financial and Pepsi are among its clients - as part of a benefits package. According to Circles, employees save an average of 3.5 hours every time they use the year-round service, whether it's for making dinner or theater reservations, or assisting with gift buying during the holidays.
Problem solved, right?
Like the online grocery store craze that fizzled and died a few years ago, it remains to be seen whether this will catch on in a big way.
At St. Pete Travel, Hayse recently bought several decorative light switch plates at www.artplates.com while listening to some awful airline-on-hold music. Next, she'll buy some gift certificates to an outlet mall.
But most of her online shopping is done at home, which still seems to be the most popular place. For the third year in a row, Thanksgiving Day, a time when most people are at home, was the busiest day of the year for online retailers, according to www.hitwise.com a Web site monitoring service.
Not the following Friday or Monday, when people are back at work.
As for the notion of someone else selecting a gift, Hayse has her doubts.
"It would take all the fun out of it," she said. "I guess only I know exactly what I want. If I was looking for a TV, maybe. But if I'm looking for something personal, no.
"I only trust myself to find the best deal."
--Tom Zucco can be reached at 727 893-8247 or zucco@sptimes.com
[Last modified December 20, 2005, 01:50:22]
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