Cut & Paste Journalism: NetImperative Spits Out Suspect Nielsen Findings

Is it just us or do other folk out there get annoyed by inaccurate reporting and suspect research findings? We suppose that the reason we get a little annoyed is that other folk are going to pick this stuff up, believe it, re-report it, stick it in business plans, make economic policy. (We did protest to NI last time we made a point about their editorial but they didn’t get back to us - hey we’re just a purple blog). So today’s issue about yesterday’s headline on NI:

NetImperative’s Headline: Online to account for over half of all Xmas gifts

Sounds amazing, yeah? Finally the dream of online is being realised, yeah? No, in fact – sounds a little far-fetched.

Actual stat from Nielsen research: Online to account for over half of all xmas gifts of existing online shoppers

OK – That stat makes sense. If you already shop online there’s a good propensity that you’ll shop for your holiday gifts online.

So we were also going to go into a big tirade about the Nielsen findings too
but we thought we’d just list a few of the highlights instead as
there’s more important/fun posts to do (and, btw: we believe you
applied a very scientific methodology but, Nielsen,we just don’t
believe the results. No leading questions there and mis-interpreted
results, no?):

• Half of UK online shoppers will resell Xmas gifts
• One in five women will get increase their money for Christmas shopping through selling online
• Two thirds of online UK shoppers will buy through Brit retailer Tesco.
• One in five online shoppers will purchase some form of holiday as a gift

Makes you wonder if they just asked their tech dept.

NetImperative