High-value sales down; utility switching up

The rising cost of living is driving down sales of high-value items such as televisions, and increasing the number of people switching to a cheaper utilities provider.

Those trends have been identified among the half a million shoppers on the froggybank.co.uk network, the UK's largest network of consumer loyalty cashback websites.

It compared buying habits of its 500,000 members in April to June 2008 with the same period in 2007.

Sales of high-value items are down 21 per cent, and credit card and loan applications have fallen eight per cent.

But householders are keen to reduce their bills, with the number switching utility providers increasing 32 per cent.

The number of people entering competitions to win cash is up 14 per cent, and the use of vouchers has shot up 17 per cent.

Marketing manager Nadeem Azam said: "The trends are really clear: people have less money in their pocket, so they are buying less and trying to save more money.

"That is why they are driven to cashback websites like froggybank.co.uk in the first place, and once on board they are doing whatever they can to reduce their bills".

It's estimated there are more than 20 million online shoppers who are yet to discover cashback and get back up to 100 per cent of the middleman's fee on all their online shopping.

The network consists of 180 websites led by froggybank.co.uk, the UK's first and only green 100 per cent cashback site.

Shoppers log onto a cashback site before making online purchases from major retailers as normal.

The referral fee paid by the retailer to the cashback site is returned to the shopper.

Froggybank.co.uk has committed to work with PURE the Clean Planet Trust, to offset one million tons of carbon by 2012.

That's equivalent to the annual emissions of 180,000 average UK homes.

All the cashback paid by retailers can be turned into charitable donations that will support PURE.

Shoppers can alternatively give the money to another charity, or keep some or all of it for themselves.

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