First-time parents spend more on online than other new parents, study says
As marketers seek more information about who’s buying online, research firms are segmenting the online buying population into ever more tightly targeted groups. One of the latest sub-segments to emerge is new parents, which Forrester Research estimates to represent some 4.5 million North American households this year.
Time-strapped new parents, says Forrester, are 14% more likely to buy online, and they spend more online as well. That’s especially true of first-time parents. Of the surveyed households wired for Internet access that either had newborns or were expecting children, 54% of first-time parents have made an online purchase, versus 50% of households who recently had or were expecting another child, and 46% of wired households that did not have and were not expecting children.
The first-time parents spent an average $350 online in the previous three months, while the second-timers spent an average $292 and those without and not expecting children an average $317.
New and expectant parents are big users of portals, search engines and other Internet tools to get information, and they depend on technology to increase flexibility between work and home. In fact, Forrester found, more than 70% of new, first-time parents own cell phones, more than either second-time parents or those without children. New first-time parents also were more likely to own pagers, digital video cameras and PDAs than either of the other groups, says Forrester.
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