Teens more influential with parents and more reliant on web for information

and they:

… were much more price-sensitive, likely starting to realize that money may not in fact grow on trees. More importantly though, the internet was a much bigger factor in forming preferences. Two in five teens said online reviews influenced their computer product preferences, and 37% cited product websites.

Is the internet the next big teen “click”?

Here’s what is on my lists… more to come in the Want List

Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that the case for the rest of as well?

Anyways, here’s what the study revealed:

Gen Y consumers are eager to see “innovative services” that allow them to better control, organize and manage email coming from brands.

• 78% would like their email client to automatically categorize and delete expired promotional messages.
• 62%  would like communicate directly with retailers about their favorite products in exchange for getting the best prices from them.

• 44%  say they’d subscribe to an email service that collected and summarized multiple offers of interest to them.

• 32%  say they’d share promotional email offers with members inside a social network and open emails from others.

More than half of Gen Y consumers (51%) say they’d join a separate social network dedicated to managing brand interactions

Now the better question is “Is someone listening to this out there?  Or better yet, has someone already figured this out and is working on the next BIG THING”.

Some 36% of online shoppers ran into roadblocks when buying gifts this past holiday season — ranging from slow website response, to fruitless efforts to check out, to outright system crashes — according to a survey of 1,000 online consumers, conducted for Guidance by Synovate, reports Retailer Daily.

According to the survey, online shopping hassles affect the overall degree to which people will shop online: Across nearly every demographic breakdown — other than race — the group least likely to say their online shopping was incident-free was also the group least likely to shop online.

Other major findings of the survey can be found here.  But before you click, I have put together a few guidelines to ensure your online shopping experience remains glitch-free.

I have shopped online for over 4 years now and I can pretty much say it has been a ‘glitch-free’ experience.  Over the years, I have purchased from Amazon, Future Shop, Best Buy, CDW, eBay, Etsy, and Apple.  Perhaps this unlucky 36% were victims of cyber-Monday or even that the sites they trying to purchase from were not necessarily ‘big box retailers’ who tend to be better at handling the in-coming cyber-traffic.

Here are a few tricks I can recommend if you want to make sure your online shopping experience remains a painless one:

1. Be realistic. If your still on dial-up, forget it.  The purchase process will likely be too much for your modem and the sluggishness will likely lead to issues.
2. Choose a ‘big box retailer’ you know and trust. IT departments in a big box retailer tend to be better prepared to manage the incoming cyber-traffic.
3. Go with your gut. As you navigate sites, judge their response rate, evaluate the site’s organization and most of all, answer the question:  Do I ‘get’ this site?  If your experience is sketchy, chances are so will the purchasing experience.

Finally, consider this: A website has its own personality, just like each of us.  We don’t ‘get’ everyone so why would we ‘get’ every website.  So if you find yourself confused about a site and not sure where its trying to lead you, chances are you’re not ‘getting’ the site and you’ll probably encounter these same difficulties when you go through their shopping cart process.  My recommendation is to reconsider purchasing from this site.  It will save you from a potentially frustrating experience.

I’d love to know if you’ve ever reconsidered purchasing online from a site because of a ‘gut feeling’.

Did you choose to shop online this year?  If so, what were you shopping for? Personally, I bought books and DVD’s.  It was easier and cheaper.