Back to school advertising and purchase choices

Our recent iReach survey has revealed that advertising continues to maintain an important role in purchasing decisions of Irish parents with children going back to school this September.

Advertising continues to play an important role for Parents with more than a half of the sample has shown to be influenced by advertising about books (56%), uniforms (53%), sports equipment (53%) and food/school lunches (50%).

In relation to school lunch boxes, parents have admitted that the most important factors in the choice of children’s lunch are, in order of relevance, focus on nutrition (50%), taste (27%) and school regulations (14%).  This will be an interesting trend to follow as awareness of the issues in Ireland on Child Obesity improves.  According to SafeFood; 1 in 4 children in Ireland are overweight or obese, while obese children are likely to become obese adults.  Research shows that parent's find it difficult to recognize that their child's weight is not healthy so understanding what goes in the Lunchbox each day is important for patents to ensure a balanced diet.

All media communication channels analysed by iReach shown a similar level of importance or influence and effectiveness averaging 30%. In the survey we see little difference between traditional media (radio, newspapers and television) and new digital media or communications channels ( websites, social media or online articles). This highlights the trust and favoured nature of digital and social media channels now on par with traditional media in Ireland.

Books and cards are the most popular gift ideas for Father's Day in the UK and Ireland

Father’s day is on Sunday the 21st of June in Ireland and the UK. We used our social insights platform to see what people are talking about and what they are planning to give their fathers on this special day.

Books and cards are the most popular gift ideas in the UK and Ireland.

In the UK, beers are also mentioned as gift options for Father’s day, while in Ireland socks appear as one of the favourites.

See the Social Insights Clusters from our Social Insights Platform looking at last month's Tweets:

5 in 10 parents agreed that advertising for food impacts their children

iReach Insights conducted a survey of 1,000 adult consumers regarding Irish family purchase decisions. Children are finishing school for the Summer holidays hence they will be spending more time grocery shopping with their parents. The study revealed that children have the strongest influence over purchase decisions made in the food category rather than any other category. (See below)

Children also play an important role in purchase decisions for Sporting Equipment and Clothing (59%), General Grocery Shopping (59%), Computer, Tablet and Phone (50%) in Irish households. Finance/Insurance and service purchase decisions attract least input from their children: 14% General and Health Insurances, 13% General Banking, 12% Life Insurance and 11% Utilities.

Summer Feelings in Ireland and UK - Social Media

Summer is about to come and tweets with mentions of Summer are increasing in Ireland and UK with great expectations.

We used our Twitter Topic Wheel to analyse the difference of feelings and topics most commented on in Ireland and UK related to Summer.

See the Twitter Topic Wheel from our Social Insights Platform looking at last month's Tweets:

On the Topic Wheel we can note the difference of topics. In Ireland, people are commenting about school exams, festival and sun. In UK people seem to be more concerned about their body, as two of the most mentioned words are bikini body and muscle.

Another difference we can note is that Irish people are talking about Summer holidays and British people are concerned about what to wear during Summer.

Marriage Equality in Ireland - Overview

Our survey has revealed that 65% of Irish people plan to vote Yes, and 17% planning to vote No. A further 10% have yet to decide with 8% preferring not to say.

71% of Females plan to vote Yes compared to 55% of males with 27% of males siding with the No vote compared to only 10% of females.

21% of adults surveyed said they were not likely to vote on the Marriage Referendum with half of these (50%) eligible but not registered to vote on Friday. More females at 60% are not registered to vote compared to 40% of males.

Of those not intending to vote on Friday, 50% are eligible to vote but not registered, 20% are unable to vote while the remaining 30% feel the Referendum does not concern them.

Note to editors:  This survey of 1,000 adults is nationally representative by Age, Gender, Region and Social Class but is not structured as a Poll reflecting electoral or constituency voting.

About iReach Insights
iReach Insights provides a range of research and market intelligence services in Ireland and Europe. iReach has built our Consumer Decisions Research Panel of 40,000 members in Ireland, delivering robust research

When buying online 77% of Irish people consider trust as most important

In March 2015 iReach Insights conducted a survey of 1,000 people regarding online shopping in Ireland. Our new survey has revealed trust (77%) is the factor that most likely encourage online purchases in Ireland, while 63% of Irish people say they would like to see the product in a good picture to see what they are buying and 56% say they would buy a product if it is cheaper online. Easy sales process (55%) and an easy returns policy (59%) are also very important for Irish consumers.

Recommendations, in-store visits and online review are the main influencers that causes strongest impact on online purchases in Ireland.

As for devices used when shopping online, laptop (77%) is the most popular amongst Irish online consumers, followed by desktop (53%), mobile phone (36%) and tablet (34%). Both tablets (up from 26% to 34%) and smartphones (up from 28% to 36%) continue to grow in popularity if compared to 2014.

“59% of Irish people say they would never pay for Online News”

Irish Times have recently announced that they will be introducing a paywall for their online content, meaning that if you want to read the full news content online, you have to pay a monthly subscription fee.

In February 2015 iReach Insights conducted a survey of 1,000 people regarding newspapers and media channels in Ireland. Results show that although 55% of Irish people say they read news online everyday (only 13% percent of consumers buy Newspaper on a daily basis), 59% say they would never pay for online news.

When asked about trusting the information of all news sources, the survey showed Radio (90%) and TV News (87%) are considered by Irish audience to be the most trustworthy, followed by newspapers in which consumers showed the same level of trust to newspaper content regardless of distribution channel - 81% for both printed and online. Blogs and Forums are the less trusted news sources (40%).

Irish people opinion regarding payments for online content – Key Findings:

• 24% Would not pay a monthly subscription, but would pay a once off fee if it was not available for free

• 12% Would pay between €10 and €15 to access the favourite newspaper content online

• 5% Would pay between €15 and €30 to access the favourite newspaper content online