LoveHoney representative Ruth Wilkinson told XBIZ that the map is interactive, allowing visitors to search for their towns to see how much of residents’ budgets are devoted to sex toys, DVDs and other items meant to enhance their sex lives.
“[Visitors can] see how much the people there spend on their sex lives, and can compare their town with others across the U.K.,” Wilkinson said.
A company release said that today, the map revealed that Upminster is “Britain’s sexiest town,” and that Essex adults spend more than $117 a year on their sex lives, 11 times the $11 national average.
Upminster reportedly spends 15 times the national average on bondage gear.
"I’m not surprised at all that people are spending up big on sex toys given the current economic climate,” author Tracey Cox said in a statement. “If you can't afford to go out, there's only so much [TV] you can watch. It's a positive for relationships — it shows an openness and willingness to make an effort to try new things.”
LoveHoney said it developed the U.K. Sex Map to uncover adult shopping habits, which can be fun and beneficial to product manufacturers and retailers.
The company found, by monitoring Internet traffic and speaking with companies including Durex and Ann Summers willing to share stats, that the U.K. spends more than $520 million a year on sex.
That number, divided by 48 million people, resulted in the estimated national spending average.
“We took an anonymous sample of more than 500,000 orders placed at LoveHoney.co.uk over the last three years,” a release said. “We then aggregated the data into regions that match the population statistics from the U.K. Census and divided the amount of money spent in each region by the number of people who live there to tell us the average spend per head on all sex products.”
The U.K. Sex Map can be viewed at UKSexMap.co.uk.
