This year's Super Bowl on Sunday, Feb. 3, will pit the Baltimore Ravens against the San Francisco 49ers and as usual, a lot of fans want to watch the game on a new TV. But not just any HDTV, according to research released today (Jan. 22) by the makers of BuyVia, a mobile app that helps consumers find the best deals on electronics.
BuyVia pulls in deals from both retail stores and online shopping sites to help shoppers find a good deal on TVs, as well as laptops, smartphones, tablets and cameras. App users can sign up for real-time geographic-based alerts so if they're passing a store that has a deal on a product they've added to their BuyVia shopping list, they'll receive a notification while they're nearby. In store, TV buyers can find deals by scanning barcodes or searching by product.
The majority of BuyVia users are shopping for a 55-inch Samsung TV, BuyVia said. Three of the top five most-scanned TVs in stores were 55-inch models — two from Samsung and one from LG, while smaller 32-inch sets from Samsung and Toshiba completed the list. As for technology, LCD displays were far more popular than plasma TVs, which accounted for less than 5 percent of barcode scans.
Despite the hype over smart TVs and LED TVs, only 5 percent of users searched specifically for these types of TVs. For most shoppers, size was the feature that mattered.