Target, Lego Emerge As Sought-After Brands This Holiday Season

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 1, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Americans are on the hunt for holiday gifts earlier than ever in 2013, and Ask.com, the leading online brand for questions and answers, today released insight into this season's top gifts and shopping trends. The data was culled from Ask.com's 100 million monthly users, based on top trending searches and user polls, and yielded some surprising results.

As Americans gear up for the holidays, the most coveted brand appears to be the Philip Lim 3.1 Collection for Target, which emerged as the top trending retail search term on Ask.com, unexpectedly beating out the highly publicized iPhone 5 (which trailed behind at a far #2). Ask.com also found that Lego loyalty beat out Mattel, Hasbro and LeapFrog when it came to the most wanted toys this holiday season.

A still-recovering economy doesn't look as though it will put a damper on shopping this year, with more than 30 percent of Ask.com users reporting they will get a head start on purchases. At the same time, nearly the same amount (33 percent) say they plan to re-gift presents from holidays past.

Additional findings include (see further below for full methodology):

• 40 percent of Ask.com users will avoid crowds by hitting the stores before Black Friday, traditionally considered the official start of the holiday shopping season.
• The top trending consumer electronic product on Ask.com was Apple's iPad 5, followed by the Samsung Galaxy Note, the Sony PlayStation 4, the Microsoft Xbox One, and the Google Nexus Android Tablet.
• Lego Mindstorms is the most popular toy among Ask.com users, with 40 percent of users selecting it over the Barbie Dreamhouse (31 percent), LeapFrog LeapPad (16 percent) and Furby Boom (13 percent).
• In store vs. online: East Coast shoppers like to be up close and personal, while folks on the West Coast seem to prefer the web for their holiday purchases. Ask.com mobile search data from East Coast locales skewed toward brick and mortar stores and physical addresses, whereas West Coasters more often navigated directly to online retailers. For example, for retailers including Bed Bath & Beyond and Target, East Coasters requested the physical store address, whereas West Coasters more often navigated directly to the retailers' web sites.

These findings are derived from search query data and user polls featured on Ask.com, collected over a one-month period and including responses from nearly 5,000 (4,861) poll participants. Top-trending questions are derived from Ask.com's 100 million monthly users between August 28, 2013 and September 25, 2013. Trending is defined as those questions that were posed and viewed most frequently by Ask users over this time period.

About Ask.com
With 100 million global users, Ask.com is a leading online brand for questions and answers and an operating business of IAC (NASDAQ: IACI). Now available as a mobile service, Ask.com mobile apps have been downloaded more than 3 million times. More information is available at www.ask.com or http://blog.ask.com.

SOURCE Ask.com