When the coronavirus entered the world around March 2020, the situation has been dire in terms of certain kinds of trade. Whereas global trade has decreased overall, especially in physical locations, online trade has increased, which is reflected in the fact that we see an increase in the number of Norwegians who click on affiliate links to go to online stores. 

Compared with last year, we see an increase of 29.4% in the period March 17 to April 7. Right now the trend is that the increase continues upwards, and we will look more into how people in Norway are buying more home products than ever before. 

Home office, home gym, and home evenings

Not unexpectedly, we see clear trends in people spending their days at home and buying products accordingly. Below we point out some of the obvious trends that are happening right now.

Among the winners, we see products that make it easier to work from home. Now we all see each other at video meetings, which means that webcams have increased by an incredible 2548%, and video editing cards for processing video streaming are up by 653%. Classic computer accessories such as monitors (102%), docking stations (103%), computer mouses (74%), and keyboards (72%) are also experiencing good growth. In addition, office chairs are up 617%, and as we all know, an office is not complete without coffee and coffee grinders, which are up 179%.

Another booming home product is the Frisørsaks that the company Sakser.no is delivering to people all across Norway. They deliver both to professional hairdressers and to those who cut the family’s hair at home, which makes it a great appliance during covid since the local saloons have been forced to close down momentarily. Sakser have their own factories that produce scissors for us so that we can avoid more expensive intermediaries, and their scissors are tested by professional hairdressers before they make them available to the public.

Will home products continue being a gold mine? 

It is difficult to predict the future in these times, but we have seen affiliate traffic grow significantly in Norway during the quarantine and home office period.

Given that there will most likely be limited travel this summer, there is also a probability that consumers will want to use their holiday money in other ways, which in turn will strengthen both physical and online commerce.

With a more price-sensitive population and a larger share of the total online shopping, we believe affiliate links will continue to be an important channel for Norway’s consumers. We see that more people have now tried e-commerce and price comparison, which can benefit the industry also in the future.