The Swiss are increasingly shopping for electronics online
Online shopping for electronics is very popular with the Swiss.In the representative survey conducted by the Zurich-based market research company Marketagent.com, 1,290 Swiss people in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland provided information about their personal favorites in the home electronics sector.Awareness development between 2012 and 2016In an unaided survey, Interdiscount is the best-known specialist electronics store in Switzerland. 58% of respondents spontaneously thought of this name slightly more often than Media Markt (56%) or Fust (52%). One of the rising stars in the sector is melectronics: the company has increased its brand awareness from 38% to 51% since 2012. Digitec, which has caught up from 11% to 24%, microspot.ch (3% to 10%), Conrad (6 % to 9%) and brack.ch (4% to 9%) also show a positive awareness trend.If the respondents are given the answer options, Media Markt (95% to 91%), Interdiscount (94% to 88%) and melectronics (89% to 85%) as well as Fust (79% to 69%) have lost a little in awareness over the last 4 years. On the other hand, online retailers Digitec (60% to 72%), Microspot (46% to 61%) and Conrad (51% to 56%) have made gains.Media Markt remains favorite company Despite a slight drop in popularity, Media Markt remains the most popular company in the Swiss electronics landscape (18%). melectronics has made a big leap forward on the popularity scale, recording an increase in popularity from 1% to 17% since 2012. Hot on the heels of the Migros chain are Interdiscount (16%) and Digitec. The latter's popularity among customers rose from 2% to 15% in 2016. Fust, another major player, has lost some of its popularity (from 9% to 6%). The big loser, however, is Manor Multimedia: it slipped from 14% in 2012 to 1% in 2016 when it was named as the most popular company.Women more thrifty than menThe fact that men's enthusiasm for technology continues unabated today is also reflected in their spending: At an average of CHF 1,251 per year, they spend almost twice as much on home electronics as women at CHF 672.Although women (62%) pay more attention to promotions and special offers than men (52%), overall bargains arouse significantly less interest among Swiss men and women today (57%) than four years ago (77%).Spontaneously and without price researchHome electronics purchases are also much more spontaneous today than they were in 2012: while almost three quarters of all Swiss people (73%) only made a purchase after careful consideration back then, just over half (55%) of those surveyed do so today, and four years ago almost half of customers researched prices before making a purchase in store (47%), today only just over a third (36%) do so. However, such a procedure is more common among women (42%) than men (29%).Swiss people shop online and not abroadA total of 72% of all Swiss people have already shopped online and plan to do so in the future (79% men vs. 65% women). 41% of respondents compare online prices and then buy the products online where they are cheapest. In general, women (27%) are still slightly more likely to reject the online channel than men (16%), while using foreign countries to buy electronics is an option for very few: only 6% of Swiss people prefer this option most often, with men (8%) doing this slightly more than women (3%).
