Online Home Improvement Products Purchaser

Why, What and How: Consumer Online Shopping Behaviors

Online con­sumer pur­chas­ing habits can’t be eval­u­at­ed with­out men­tion­ing the mam­moth in room: Ama­zon. The online retail­er has fun­da­men­tal­ly changed con­sumer expec­ta­tions about how much ship­ping should cost (free) and how long it should take to arrive after pur­chase (less than one week). Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, 33% of con­sumers indi­cate Ama­zon has bet­ter prices, help­ing the retail­er hold onto its top spot in the online home improve­ment prod­ucts market.

How­ev­er, while online shop­ping is undoubt­ed­ly a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic force, only 8% of con­sumers are mak­ing their home improve­ment pur­chas­es exclu­sive­ly online, while 50% remain com­mit­ted to store pur­chas­es. Inter­est­ing­ly, aver­age spend­ing remains high­er for in-store pur­chasers ver­sus online shop­pers. This trend is like­ly to change as younger gen­er­a­tions, who have come of age in a dig­i­tal-first land­scape, get older.

This year, the Home Improve­ment Research Insti­tute (HIRI) sought to dig deep­er into the online buy­er with its Online Home Improve­ment Prod­ucts Pur­chas­er report.

Study High­lights
The research team sur­veyed 2,295 U.S. adults over a 13-day peri­od dur­ing the sum­mer of 2019, illu­mi­nat­ing answers to the fol­low­ing big questions:

• What dri­ves online con­sumers to move their home improve­ment pur­chas­es online?
• What process do con­sumers fol­low when pur­chas­ing prod­ucts online?
• What bar­ri­ers must home improve­ment retail­ers over­come in order to grow their e‑commerce business?

For full access to the Online Home Improve­ment Prod­ucts Pur­chas­er report and oth­er pro­pri­etary research, join HIRI.