THE ONLINE daily deals market continues to grow in popularity among Irish consumers, who spent a total of €3.5 million on discounted offers available through sites such as Living Social and Groupon last month.
According to data from sift.ie, a website which pulls all the deals together on a daily basis and sends them out to subscribers in a single mail, health and beauty vouchers and discounted meals and drinks in restaurants were by far the most popular options among online bargain hunters in July.
Health and beauty offers made up 36 per cent of the total market, while food and drink discount coupons finished in second place on 22 per cent. Travel and accommodation offers were bought by 16 per cent of people who used the services, while fitness vouchers came in last at 4 per cent.
Sites including Groupon, Pigsback, Living Social and GrabOne work by providing discounted offers from local businesses which might otherwise find it hard to reach a wider audience. The websites take a percentage of each deal sold. Last month more than €1.2 million was spent by Irish consumers on health and beauty products, with more than €250,000 going on hair care.
Perhaps those people who prefer not to look after their hair might be looking to get rid of it: the next most popular category under health and beauty was hair removal, followed by spa packages, both of which accounted for 13 per cent of the market – or more than €125,000 per category.
“We saw over 30 laser hair removal deals in July, with four of these deals making it into our top 20 in terms of the value of vouchers sold,” sift.ie chief executive Shane Hayes said. “The most popular laser hair removal deal pulled in €43,000.”
The deal aggregator site found hotels accounted for eight of the top 20 deals in July, with the average discount on hotel prices coming in at 56 per cent.
