last word
Consumer Eyewear Trends
Grace Hewlett
As culled from recent research conducted by The Vision Council, here are seven things you should know about the eyewear and eyecare habits and intent of your patients and eyewear buyers in general.
1 PRICE AND PRODUCT COMPARISONS. Close to half (40.5 percent) of recent Rx eyeglass buyers said they first went online to compare prices.
2 ONLINE QUALITY EXPECTATIONS. “When asked about their expectations from online eyeglass retailers, a significant majority of online buyers (91.7 percent) expect the same level of quality…that they do from brick-and-mortar retailers.”
3 POST-LASIK WEARERS. “Just under half of all refractive surgery/LASIK patients (vs. 76 percent of the total adult population in the U.S.) currently use some form of vision correction.”
4 EXAM FREQUENCY. “[Approximately] 43.8 percent of the adult population has had an eye exam within the past year.”
5 VISION CARE MARKET. At the midyear point, the total market in dollars was up 3.9 percent over the 12 months ending June 2012. The big winners: readers, +7.3 percent; spectacle lenses, +6.0 percent; and contacts, +5.9 percent.
6 LENS DEMAND. In June of this year, the average retail price for a pair of Rx lenses was $140.16. That’s up 4.6 percent from a year earlier. Consumers have shown the most increased interest in AR, which rose by 2.2 percent over the year ending June 2012.
| BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT |
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According to The Vision Council’s second quarter 2013 overview, attitudes toward the overall business environment in the U.S. have risen impressively from a year earlier—that is, from the previous 12-month period ending June 2012. +19.4% (Source: The Conference Board) +10.9% (Source: Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan) +4.6% (Source: US Census Bureau) +2.1% (Source: National Federation of Independent Business) |
7 FRAMES BY CHANNEL. In terms of dollar volume of frames purchased, independents have increased market share by 4.4 percent over the last year. They garnered a 50 percent share of frame sales for the 12 months ending June 2012, and a 50.8 percent share for the year ending June 2013. EB
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