With national forecasts for holiday sales generally gloomy, the British should be especially glad for the Internet this year. That’s because the British are among the world’s biggest online shoppers, according to a global survey, along with Germany and Austria.
Does it have something to do with weather that is inhospitable to bricks-and-mortar shopping? An antisocial tendency? The survey, by ACNielsen, doesn’t say. But 11 out of the top 20 nations for Internet purchases are in Europe, according to the survey of 21,100 people in 38 markets. In fact, most of the markets in Europe make higher average purchases on the Internet than North America — five a month as opposed to four, according to Nielsen. In the Asia-Pacific region, South Koreans and Taiwanese are the biggest shoppers.
In every region of the world, this is likely to be the biggest online shopping season yet, erasing any doubt that the commercial side of the Internet has an impact on the global economy.Last year, sales on the first Monday of December hit $380 million, a 29 per cent jump over 2003. And for November and December as a whole, the Internet marketing firm ComScore Networks projects that online sales will total $19 billion, a 24 per cent increase over last year.
That fits in with a report from the credit card company Visa, which said that online spending by its card-holders grew 26 per cent on this year’s "Cyber Monday," which fell on November 28, compared with the same day a year ago.Why a Monday rather than on the weekend? One major reason: A Shop.org poll found that one-third of employees use the day to access the web from faster office connections. Still, that isn’t the busiest online shopping day of the year; procrastinators know that will come much closer to Christmas Day.
In the United States, the most popular sites on Cyber Monday were eBay.com, which attracted 11.7 million consumers, followed by Amazon.com, with 5.6 million, and Walmart.com, with 3.09 million.
The Nielsen survey, meanwhile, is a font of shopping trivia, showing the vast differences in habits that cultures create, even in something as global as Internet shopping. Thanks to the influence of Amazon.com, books are the most popular items purchased on the Internet, ordered by 34 percent of those who shop online, followed by DVDs at 22 per cent.
But in Japan, groceries are the most popular purchase after books. And South Korean shoppers are most likely to buy cosmetics and nutritional products online, three times above the global average.
In Latin America, electronic equipment like cameras is just behind books in popularity. And France, Germany and Sweden helped make European online shoppers the leaders in the clothing-accessories-shoes category.
Credit cards are the most common form of payment. But in many parts of the world — whether for cultural reasons of because of security fears — a lot of people prefer to pay for their Internet goods by cash delivery.In China, it is the most common kind of payment, while in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, India and Japan, COD is just behind credit cards.
Does it have something to do with weather that is inhospitable to bricks-and-mortar shopping? An antisocial tendency? The survey, by ACNielsen, doesn’t say. But 11 out of the top 20 nations for Internet purchases are in Europe, according to the survey of 21,100 people in 38 markets. In fact, most of the markets in Europe make higher average purchases on the Internet than North America — five a month as opposed to four, according to Nielsen. In the Asia-Pacific region, South Koreans and Taiwanese are the biggest shoppers.
In every region of the world, this is likely to be the biggest online shopping season yet, erasing any doubt that the commercial side of the Internet has an impact on the global economy.Last year, sales on the first Monday of December hit $380 million, a 29 per cent jump over 2003. And for November and December as a whole, the Internet marketing firm ComScore Networks projects that online sales will total $19 billion, a 24 per cent increase over last year.
That fits in with a report from the credit card company Visa, which said that online spending by its card-holders grew 26 per cent on this year’s "Cyber Monday," which fell on November 28, compared with the same day a year ago.Why a Monday rather than on the weekend? One major reason: A Shop.org poll found that one-third of employees use the day to access the web from faster office connections. Still, that isn’t the busiest online shopping day of the year; procrastinators know that will come much closer to Christmas Day.
In the United States, the most popular sites on Cyber Monday were eBay.com, which attracted 11.7 million consumers, followed by Amazon.com, with 5.6 million, and Walmart.com, with 3.09 million.
The Nielsen survey, meanwhile, is a font of shopping trivia, showing the vast differences in habits that cultures create, even in something as global as Internet shopping. Thanks to the influence of Amazon.com, books are the most popular items purchased on the Internet, ordered by 34 percent of those who shop online, followed by DVDs at 22 per cent.
But in Japan, groceries are the most popular purchase after books. And South Korean shoppers are most likely to buy cosmetics and nutritional products online, three times above the global average.
In Latin America, electronic equipment like cameras is just behind books in popularity. And France, Germany and Sweden helped make European online shoppers the leaders in the clothing-accessories-shoes category.
Credit cards are the most common form of payment. But in many parts of the world — whether for cultural reasons of because of security fears — a lot of people prefer to pay for their Internet goods by cash delivery.In China, it is the most common kind of payment, while in Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, India and Japan, COD is just behind credit cards.