Today the US Commerce Department reported a gain in retail sales for May 2008, attributing the increase in consumer spending (at least partially) to the tax stimulus checks that were sent out during the month. We have also been theorizing quite a bit around what the impact of the rebate checks would be and if traffic to Shopping & Classifieds would increase as a result. It is very likely that some consumers did turn around and spend the rebate, but so far in 2008, visits to the category have been up every month, signaling that the shoppers have always been out there. In May 2008, the monthly market share of US visits for the Shopping & Classifieds category was 9.37%, an increase of 26% over May of last year. Some or all of this activity may be research, but consumers are still showing a lot of interest in shopping despite the current economic climate.

This isn’t to say that consumers are not price conscious – we just issued a press release yesterday discussing the rise in traffic to coupon websites, which have increased 56% for the week ending June 6, 2008, as compared to the same week last year. One interesting point is that consumers know what they are looking for when they seek out coupons online. Among the top 250 search terms driving traffic to the coupon websites for the 4 weeks ending June 6, 2008, 60% of the search queries include a specific retailer brand or branded product as opposed to only 20% of the search terms which were broad, generic terms like ‘grocery coupons or car rental coupons’.

Shoppers seem to be spending on home & self-improvement in May – the House & Garden and Health & Beauty categories were among the top growing product categories in May 2008 as compared to last year.
What do you think? Are people running out or logging on to spend their checks?