PORT WASHINGTON, NY, December 11, 2000 – As the holidays approach, e-tailers looking for gift items to promote should consider the housewares category. According to NPD HomeTrakÒ , a service of leading marketing information provider The NPD Group, Inc., 12% of the close to 80 million Americans actively on the Internet have purchased housewares on the Web.

Among online housewares buyers, gift purchasing is very popular. NPD’s HomeTrak eVisory report, a study of 4,579 online consumers, reports nearly one-third of those who buy gifts online said they would shop for housewares as a Christmas or Hanukkah present this holiday season. The gift-giving season that includes Christmas and Hanukkah ranks second only to weddings as the most important occasion for purchasing housewares gifts online.

Wedding/Bridal Shower   54%

Christmas/Hanukkah      29%

Birthday                         24%

Anniversary                    20%

Mother’s Day                  16%

Baby Shower                   4%

Father’s Day                    3%

Graduation                       3%

Valentine’s Day                2%

More and more sites are building online gift registries or "wish lists" where people can record their gift requests. The use of online registries for gift purchasing decreases the need to touch and feel a product.

"If online gift registries for weddings, birthdays and holidays become more popular, the online purchase of housewares and other like gift items will likely increase," reports Clark Johnson, vice president of NPD HomeTrak. "If a buyer knows exactly what the registrant wants, there is no need to go to the store and stand in line to make a purchase."

HomeTrak data suggest a direct relationship between sturdiness and popularity in purchasing housewares online. The most popular categories are the durable cookware and bakeware categories, with 7% of online consumers purchasing. Tabletop is a close second, with almost 5% purchasing. Cutlery is purchased by nearly 3% of Web consumers and is purchased online by more men than women. The prestige or more expensive categories of formal dinnerware and crystal beverageware each had less than 1% of Internet users purchasing.

Finally, no one site has emerged as the leading source for housewares purchasing online. When asked what sites they had shopped at for tabletop and kitchen products, 28% of HomeTrak’s respondents reported cooking.com, 25% williams-sonoma.com and 21% reported jcpenny.com, crateandbarrel.com and bedbathandbeyond.com.