Ecommerce [37]
Yahoo! Buys European Shopping Comparison Engine, Kelkoo
Yahoo! is ramping up its European presence, by splashing out 475 million euros (about $575 million) for price-comparison Web site Kelkoo. The new acquisition will boost Yahoo's online shopping offering and open up new revenue streams through Kelkoo's lead referral scheme and other marketing initiatives. Kelkoo operates in nine countries across Europe and reaches nearly 10 percent of Internet users in the continent, offering price comparisons on electrical goods, CDs, books and cars. [Full story: Yahoo acquires Kelkoo - ZDNet UK]
More Asians Shop Online Than Any Other Ethnic Group
While relatively low in numbers, the U.S. Asian population exhibits financial strength. Measured at just 4 percent of the Internet population, according to Jupiter Research, 42 percent of Asian Internet households earn $75,000 or more annually, compared to 35 percent of Caucasians and 26 percent of African-Americans. While Hispanics outnumber Asians by more than double, the two groups nearly equal each other in the number of households that have annual incomes of $100,000 or more. In a survey of 86 major U.S. markets that roughly 56 percent of Asians have household incomes above $50,000, compared to some 50 percent of the general population. The high household income disparity among Asians and other ethnicities has exhibited itself in e-commerce. Nearly 31 percent of online Asians have made five or more Internet purchases in a year, and roughly 56 percent have made at least one purchase — overtaking the general Internet population and other online minorities. [Full story: Online Asians Lead in Income, E-commerce - ClickZ]
Mike's Ecommerce Software Launches Ecommerce & Web Design Forum Aggregator
Ecommerce Forum Watch has just been added to my Mike's Ecommerce Software web site. It's a free, online service that offers constantly updated, searchable, customizable headlines from the most popular ecommerce and web design discussion forums and message boards. Ecommerce Forum Watch uses the same technology that powers Marketing Forum Watch.
Yahoo! Store to Replace Revenue Share With CPC Ads
The fee Yahoo Store merchants pay for including their products in Yahoo! Shopping is changing. Yahoo! are discontinuing the 3.5% revenue share fee and are replacing it with new cost-per-click fees, based on the product category. The cost per click ranges from 19 cents for apparel to $1.25 for diamonds. To maintain listings in Yahoo! Shopping, merchants must sign up for the new Yahoo! Product Submit program by March 1. Merchants who sign up in February will receive free clicks. All merchants will receive 20% off the new cost-per-click fees.
Survey: Top 5 Online Marketing Promotions & Promotion Vehicles
The Shop.org/BizRate 2003 eHoliday Mood study produced some interesting results. The top 5 marketing promotions that have been most successful in driving business for the holiday period are; free ship with conditions (59%), online only sale (27%), free ship no conditions (24%), offline-online sale (22%), and free gift with purchase (14%). When asked what promotion vehicle has been most successful in driving business, the response was their own email promotion (86%), search engine marketing (58%), affiliate marketing (50%), catalog drops (37%), and portal shopping listing (17%).
Survey: Why Consumers Abandon Shopping Carts
New research from WebTrends found that 35% percent of consumers surveyed said added costs, such as shipping and handling, or lengthy delivery times resulted in their abandoning an online purchase. Sites requesting too much information is another annoyance that drives away 35% of buyers surveyed. Seventeen percent said there wasn't enough online product information to make a purchase decision. Others (14%) changed their mind and elected to go brick-and-mortar shopping instead. Sites that persuade people to buy are most likely to see repeat business, particularly if they have strong security policies and good prices. Thirty one percent of respondents said "good security policies" would be the biggest factor in their returning to a store; 28 percent cited "best prices." NetIQ came up with its numbers by conducting a national telephone survey of 1,000 adults in early December.
PayPal to Launch in Europe Next Month
Online auctioneer eBay Inc. began alerting customers this week it would launch a European business unit for its PayPal online payment service in February 2004, subject to receiving authorisation from the Financial Services Authority (FSA) in the UK. [Full story: eBay to launch PayPal Europe service next month - Forbes]
Newport News Increases Abandoned Shopping Cart Revenue by 19 Times
Newport News and other retailers are learning to significantly increase sales from shoppers who left their site after abandoning a shopping cart. Newport News, for instance, increased by 19 times the amount of revenue generated from e-mailed offers when it targeted shoppers who had quit a purchase. How did they do it? Simple... Newport News tracked the click activity of shoppers to compile a list of those who abandoned shopping carts, then e-mailed them within 10 days of their abandonment with a special offer within the product category where they had planned to make a purchase, Instead of making an offer of the same product that had been in the customer’s cart, Newport News pitched a similar categorywide offer with discounted prices. [Full story: Abandoned cart? Newport-News.com finds a way to re-capture the sale - Internet Retailer]
Personalization is not the Secret to Ecommerce
According to a study released by Jupiter Research, only 14 percent of consumers say a personalized Web site leads them to buy more often from online stores. And just 8 percent say personalization makes them more apt to visit news, entertainment and content sites more frequently. This contrasts to 54 percent of respondents who cited faster-loading pages and 52 percent cited better navigation as greater incentives.
Amazon.com's “Search Inside the Book” Feature Increases Sales by 9%
Amazon.com introduced its “Search Inside the Book” on Oct. 23 and has seen its sales in the first five days rise 9% faster than sales of books not yet in the new search program. The new search function enables shoppers to search for words on any page from more than 120,000 book titles, covering more than 33 million pages. [Full story: Amazon book sales rise 9% faster through “search inside the book” feature - Internet Retailer]
Amazon.com Unveils Full Text Search of 120,000 Books
Amazon.com raised the curtains on a new "Search Inside the Book" feature that lets shoppers preview full text of titles. The new service lets shoppers find titles based on every word inside more than 120,000 books and puts some 33 million pages of searchable text at the disposal of Amazon.com shoppers. It works by returning an image of the page where the keyword search appears. Once the shopper clicks on the link to a specific page and logs in with an Amazon.com user name, password and valid credit card, the company would allow the preview of relevant pages and the ability to search for other terms of interest with the book. [Full story: Amazon Unveils Full Text Searches - Internet News]
Report: Online Personalization Fails to Deliver ROI
A new report from Jupiter Research found that online personalization isn't cost-effective. According to the report, only 14 percent of consumers say that personalized offers or recommendations on e-commerce sites lead them to buy more often from online stores, and only 8 percent say that personalization increases their repeat visits. When asked which features would make them more likely to buy from a certain online store, 37 percent cited optimized sites (quickly loading pages), and 48 percent said easy navigation. According to the report, the number one factor for consumer considering where to purchase a product online is ease of finding products. Therefore, another logical place to start would be for merchants to optimize their search features. Other tactics recommended included cross-selling and bundling products on page sidebars or through contextual advertising. [Full story: Personalize This - Ecommerce Guide]
Paypal Launches First International Site in UK
PayPal has officially launched its first international site in the UK, which will offer business members fraud protection benefits. The Seller Protection programme offers fraud protection from chargebacks for qualified transactions. To be part of the programme, sellers will need to have a verified business account and a history of sending out tangible goods in a timely manner. In addition, fees for transferring less than £50 to a UK bank from a PayPal account will be reduced to £0.25 from £0.50. Withdrawals of £50 and above will be free.
Paid Online Content Increased 23% in H1 2003
The Online Publishers Association (OPA) found that U.S. consumers spent $748 million on online content during the first half of 2003, representing a 23 percent increase over the same period in 2002. The OPA put the market for consumer online subscription video streaming services at roughly $991 million during 2003, growing to more than $4.5 billion during 2007. Asia is predicted to be the largest market in 2007, accounting for $1.2 billion. The the personals and dating category to be the biggest paid content revenue generator — registering a 76 percent growth rate in the first half of 2003 over 2002 — followed by the business content and investment category. Paid personal growth content soared 99 percent over the year. [Full story: Paid Content Paying Off - Ecommerce Guide]
Yahoo! Launches New Comparison Shopping Search Engine
Yahoo! have launched a revamped Yahoo! Shopping search engine. The new product search engine utilizes algorithmic search technology to extract results from 3 sources, including Yahoo!'s existing database of more than 17,000 merchants, a new database of merchants via direct datafeeds that pay for each click through, and merchants and products discovered by the Inktomi crawler. Yahoo! Shopping now features side-by-side price and feature comparison, expert and consumer reviews, buyer's guides, calculated shipping and tax costs, product specifications, and merchant information from well-known retailers to specialty stores. [Press release: Yahoo! Introduces Product Search - Yahoo!]
FindWhat to Acquire Miva Merchant Software
In a departure from the frantic mergers and acquisition of search engine providers this year, FindWhat has announced plans to acquire Miva Corp., for $5.5 million in cash and stock, plus about $2.5 million in assumed debt. Miva is best known for its Miva Merchant software, which allows online merchants to create and manage their web storefronts. Currently Miva has more than 70,000 registered users. [Full story: Findwhat.com plans to acquire Miva Corp. - News-Press]
Web Site Errors Cost E-tailers $275 in Lost Sales Per Shopper
According to a new study by the San Francisco Business Internet Group, the majority of the Internet's biggest retailers are suffering from undetected Web site problems that are costing them an average of $275 in sales per shopper. The study found that 62 percent of the online sites monitored experienced some sort of error during the user's shopping experience, interfering with or preventing the completion of the purchase process. The Group's report notes that analysts found instances where a customer was unable to buy a product after conducting a product comparison. Other common failures noted were blank pages, wrong pages, and wrong items being presented. Are you sure your site doesn't have any broken links, images or forms? Find out with this neat little software program, Xenu's Link Sleuth. Best of all, it's free! [Full story: Hidden Web Site Errors Costing E-tailers Big Money - Internet News]
Broadband Users Create 31% of Online Sales
The 19% of adult Internet users who have broadband Internet access at home are responsible for 31% of all online consumer spending, Scarborough Research says in a new report on broadband Internet use. Those 23 million users are twice as likely as all Internet users to have spent $2,500 or more online in the past 12 months, 39% more likely to purchase jewelry online, 64% more likely to purchase toys and games online, and 64% more likely to purchase cars, trucks and SUVs. Scarborough Research compiled the information from from more than 200,000 interviews with adults, age 18 and over, in 75 of the county`s largest markets. [Full story: 19% of broadband users create 31% of online sales, says new study - Internet Retailer]
E-Tailers Blocking Too Many Online Orders
According to Retail Decisions USA, e-retailers are blocking up to 16% of online orders--even though less then 2% of their transactions tend to be fraudulent. Industry experts say that merchants in general block about 5% of all transactions due to suspicion of fraud, but that number rises to 16% for Internet transactions, particularly for transactions placed from foreign markets. The result is the loss of many legitimate orders. [Full story: Online fraud-fighting merchants are refusing too many orders, experts say - Internet Retailer]
Survey Finds 65% of U.S. Internet Users Won't Buy From a Poorly Designed Site
First impressions are very important to online shoppers, as Genex finds that consumers are willing to forego low prices and brand-preference if they have a poor online experience. A whopping 65 percent of the 1,100 U.S. Internet users that were surveyed won't patronize a poorly designed site — even that of a favorite brand — and 30 percent reported that Web site design is more important than a great product. Even rock-bottom prices only persuaded 4 percent to shop on a poorly designed Web site. What's worse is that nearly 30 percent stop buying from their favorite offline store if their online experience is poor. Usability and design play critical roles in site credibility, as Consumer Web Watch found through in-depth studies. Nearly half (46.1 percent) of survey participants ranked "design look" as the most important component when evaluating site credibility, followed by "design/structure." The Consumer Web Watch reports that survey participants said that a trustworthy site should have a polished, professional look, without being too slick. [Full story: Shoppers Demand Decent Design - Ecommerce Guide]
89% of Consumers Say Free Delivery & Handling Most Likely to Encourage Their Online Purchases
Jupiter Research found that 89 percent of the respondents to its annual Retail Consumer Survey Report indicated that free delivery and handling was the promotion most likely to encourage their online purchases. Moreover, the research found that 51 percent of online buyers opted for retail store purchases just to escape shipping and handling charges, and 49 percent reduced their purchases at certain online stores because of unexpectedly high or hidden shipping charges. The 2003 study categorized online shoppers based on how much they spent online in the past 12 months, and their responses to how strongly they agree with the statement, "I always buy from online stores that have been good to me in the past, even when offered discounts from competing online stores." The results on spending were almost evenly split at the $250 mark — 48 percent of the 1,952 respondents spent less and 52 percent spent more. Also, one-third of survey respondents reportedly made impulse purchases to take advantage of a promotion.
Online Sales Soared 48 Percent to $76 Billion in 2002
According to The State of Retailing Online 6.0, a Shop.org annual study conducted by Forrester Research of more than 130 retailers, online retail sales soared to $76 billion in 2002, up 48 percent over 2001. Shop.org is the online retailing division of the National Retail Federation. The study also show that 70 percent of retailers reported positive operating margins, compared with 56 percent in 2001. Online retail sales are expected to grow 26 percent in 2003 to $96 billion, with seven product categories poised for more than 40 percent growth in 2003. Last year, 32 percent of computer hardware and software was sold online. Other categories reaching double-digit penetration include tickets for events (17 percent) and books (12 percent). In total, nine categories will exceed 5 percent penetration this year compared with seven categories in 2002. Online sales are expected to reach 4.5 percent of total retail sales in 2003, up from 3.6 percent in 2002. The study also showed that 40 percent of online customers are completely new to a retailer’s entire business. By shifting budgets away from expensive portal deals to performance-based affiliate marketing and search engine marketing, retailers were able to cut marketing costs almost in half per order placed ($12 to $8), with store-based ($5) and catalog-based ($7) retailers most successful in this endeavor.
Web Site Makes Money Out of Consumer Complaints
Think all the best internet business ideas are gone? Thaink again! Here's a web site that has found a way to make money out of consumer complaints--A website that has become "gripe headquarters" to thousands of consumers wanting to whinge about corporate neglect has taken the cheeky next step - charging companies to see the complaints. Notgoodenough.org has set a fee of $100 to pass on each complaint, and more than 16 businesses - including Telstra, McDonald's, American Express, Commonwealth Bank and Australia Post - have signed up for the service. The website lists consumer's top 10 complaints each week, detailing misadventures with customer service departments. Dr Stewart said that notgoodenough.org was run by 12 staff, who all held other jobs to pay their way. The site is discussing funding with venture capitalists. [Full story: Site charges $100 to pass on whinge - The Sydney Morning Herald]
44 Percent of Luxury Consumers Consider Online Research as Very or Somewhat Important
While offline consumers flood malls looking for the lowest prices, other consumers are going online to research and identify luxury items, according to surveys conducted by Unity Marketing that analyze shopping trends. According to Unity Marketing, the Internet was named by 44 percent of luxury consumers as very or somewhat important, with editorial matter following at 42 percent. Traditional advertising lags behind with newspaper ads (31 percent); television programs and commercials (28 percent); and magazine advertising (24 percent). In 2001, Unity Marketing identified Wal-Mart as the number one jewelry retailer in the U.S. with estimated jewelry and watch sales of $2.3 billion, followed by Zales Corporation, with sales of $2.1 billion. Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, believes that there will be significant generational market shifts over the next decade or two, with baby-boomers and "empty-nesters" creating new demand for luxury items. Despite all the luxury spending, Unity Marketing measured an increase in basic items in February 2003. Retail and food service sales totaled $304.1 billion — up 2.6 percent over the previous year — with the fastest growing retail channel being gasoline, which posted a 24 percent gain over February 2002. Decreased spending was noticed in home furnishings, sporting goods, books and music, cars, consumer electronics, and appliances. Retail sales among non-store retailers — like the Internet — increased 8.4 percent from February 2002, and food and drinking establishments posted a 4.2 percent gain from last year.
Online Sales Continue to Grow in Q1 2003
Online shopping sales in the first quarter of 2003 continued to grow at a respectable rate despite the war in Iraq and a sluggish economy. The first quarter of 2003 produced sales of $12.84 billion dollars - a 27% increase over the same period in 2002 when $10.08 billion was spent, according to leading comparison shopping site and e-commerce research firm BizRate.com. Post-holiday clearance sales in early January helped provide an early boost to first quarter sales with $738.6 million dollars being spent from January 1-5, a 40% increase in sales compared to the same dates last year. The average jump in first quarter sales was driven mainly by the growth in orders made online and not by the amount spent. The average purchase price was down 2%, from $127 in Q1 2002 to $124 in Q1 2003. Orders were up 30% from 79.4 million in Q1 2002 to 103.6 million in Q1 2003. The top categories in terms of sales volume were computer hardware ($3.43 billion), electronics ($2.16 billion) and entertainment ($1.88 billion). The strongest growth in Q1 came from health & beauty (61%), entertainment (58%) and computer hardware (41%) categories.
AT&T Launches PrePaid Web Cents Service
AT&T today introduced the AT&T PrePaid Web Cents Service, a new, secure, payment service enables digital content providers to offer consumers a way to prepay for online digital content by purchasing specialty cards in traditional retail outlets. A variety of leading content providers -- Cellus USA, Disney Online, Shockwave.com GameBlast and Vindigo -- are joining a growing list of participating retailers. Consumers will start seeing select specialty cards today in some participating outlets of the PRE Solutions, Inc. Retail Partner Network, Speedway SuperAmerica LLC and Uni-Marts, Inc. Consumers simply purchase a card from displays at a participating retailer. The retailer activates the card at the point of sale, and it's ready for use. The specialty cards can be used to purchase a variety of online content such as interactive games, ring tones, graphics, maps, guidebooks, digital music, streaming audio and video, software, research services, and more. Each card is issued by the content provider and is exclusively for use on its site. [Press release: AT&T Launches AT&T PrePaid Web Cents Service - AT&T]
Online Clothing Sales Grew 35 Percent During the 2002 Holiday Shopping Season
Online clothing sales experienced a 6 percent increase during the 2002 holiday shopping season to 35 percent, according to data from Retail Forward, registering a 13-point jump from the 2000 holiday season. This two-year surge is second only to the online purchases of DVDs (8 percent in 2000 rising to 23 percent in 2002). But with The NPD Group, Inc. reporting that 76 percent of consumers are "being careful" about spending on discretionary products and services, online clothing sales could suffer through the second quarter of 2003, but big-ticket items are likely to be hit harder. According to the responses of more that 2,500 individuals in early March 2003, 41 percent plan to spend less than usual in March, April and May, 14 percent are planning to spend more than usual, and 45 percent plan to spend about the same as usual. Offline clothing retailers have also fared well, with big revenue increases noted by BIGResearch in comparisons from March 2002 to March 2003. BIGResearch also found that apparel bargain-hunters were more prevalent this year than in 2003. Nearly one-quarter (23.5 percent) of consumers only bought clothing items that were on sale — compared to 15.7 percent in March 2002.
PayPal's New Rules Dictate Where Funds Can & Cannot Be Spent
PayPal's sweeping changes to its acceptable-use policy now dictate exactly where users' funds can and cannot be spent. The change brings PayPal's policies in line with those of parent company eBay, which prohibits a wide variety of products from being sold on the site, including human body parts, alcohol and stolen property. But while eBay's ban on selling used airbags makes sense, some users say prohibitions against using PayPal funds to pay for, say, a mouse pad bearing a picture of a movie star violates their right to use their money as they please. Merchants and users are livid that PayPal is instituting such stringent controls. Some online retailers are concerned that the new restrictions will hurt their businesses, since PayPal has become a de facto standard in online payments. [Full story: PayPal Tightens Transaction Reins - Wired News]
Big Retailers Trying To Thwart E-Commerce Upstarts
The boom in e-commerce is rapidly changing the way Americans buy and sell goods, but not all retailers are buying into the revolution. In fact, companies with major investments in brick-and-mortar operations are doing all they can in many cases to throw up brick walls to thwart small, upstart e-commerce rivals. To combat the trend, e-commerce companies from mom-and-pop shops to Ebay are appealing to Congress to intervene. The House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection held hearings last fall and its chairman, Rep. W.J. "Billy" Tauzin, R-La., has introduced a bill to address the problem. The measure flatly prohibits state regulation of commercial transactions of goods and services conducted over the Internet. [Full story: Brick-and-mortar fire - CBS MarketWatch]
HP Unveils 3D Ecommerce Platform
Hewlett-Packard recently unveiled its VEDA (virtual environment design automation) project to the press. The OpenGL and XML-based application is used as a visualization database that can be viewed in 3D to create online stores that you can walk through on your monitor, browsing through rooms of items sorted by your category of choice. Inspired by first-person video games, the demo showed some eerily similar qualities to shooting games like Doom and Quake. The demo simulated a trip through HP's product catalogue including cameras and other materials that could be viewed 360-degrees. The virtual store could also be approached at the floor level or from a third-person overhead advantage point, allowing the user to skip to other sections without getting lost. While the application could currently be used as a plug-in on a standard Web browser like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, the short-term solution is to put the database on a CD first. Currently, the Lab plans testing the system in the real world with retailers like Wal-Mart. [Full story: HP Thinks in 3D for Web Browsing - Ecommerce Guide]
Forget Content, the Money's in Services
The "free vs. paid" debate surrounding Web content continued to dominate the discussions at the Jupiter Online Media Conference here Tuesday with a growing sentiment that the money lies in providing services instead of standalone content. On a day when Yahoo's chief solutions officer Tim Sanders hailed the virtue of "selling the experience," panelists argued that content could be a valuable hook to guide paying users toward add-on services. Jason Devitt, CEO of the popular city-guide application Vindigo said his company found a gold mine in providing a fee-based service around content, even though it created no content on its own. "We're not in the content business. We create no content whatsoever. But, we create value by getting information to users in a convenient place at the most convenient time. That's what people are willing to pay for -- the service," Devitt told the gathering. For $29.95 a year, Vindigo sells location-based access to content on PDAs but the content is provided entirely by business partners. "That content is already available for free but, because there is value in the service, people are paying for it. It's the service that's valuable, not the content," Devitt argued. Since going the premium route on October 2001, Devitt said the company was able to migrate 60 percent of freeloaders to the paid version. [Full story: Forget Content, the Money's in Services - InternetNews]
Hacker Safe Security Logo Converts 30% More Prospects into Customers
A new product called, "ScanAlert" sweeps a client's Web site for potential security flaws, and then posts a "Hacker Safe" security logo if the site comes up clean. To test user response to the logo, ScanAlert temporarily modified its image-serving software to serve the Hacker Safe rating image only to every second visitor at certain sites. Then it followed the shopping patterns of those who did see the image, and those who did not. The survey observed the behavior of 12,000 shoppers at the site, half of whom saw the logo ensuring the site's security. The results showed 30 percent more shoppers went on to make purchases after seeing the Hacker Safe rating as compared to those who did not see it. And this was not an isolated case. A similar test at the Web site of Infinity Micro Computer showed a 15 percent boost in sales, and CDconnection.com showed a 13 percent sales boost among those shown the security logo. There are other security logos out there on the Web, including most notably the Trust-E symbol. But Hacker Safe is different, in that the symbol's validity on the site is verified and updated constantly. [Full story: ScanAlert Hacker Safe Shopping - Ecommerce Guide]
42 Percent of CRM Software Bought to Improve the Consumer Experience Have Never Been Used
Customer relationship management solutions are gathering dust as Gartner, Inc. found in a December 2002 survey of 631 companies that nearly 42 percent of the total number of software licenses bought by businesses go unused. A Morgan Stanley survey of 300 CIOs found that 12 percent admitted to having unused CRM licenses, one-third said that they had unused database licenses. Nearly 20 percent reported unused ERP (enterprise resource planning) licenses, and just over 10 percent reported unused SCM (supply-chain management) licenses.
Multi-channel Shoppers Spent $909, Compared to $654 for Single Channel Consumers, in 2002
DoubleClick found that 56 percent of the 1,270 adult consumers that were surveyed used a combination of shopping sources, spending an average of 39 percent more than those who visited only one channel — $909 for multi-channel shoppers, compared to $654 for single channel consumers. The study found that browsing Web sites was a popular pastime for shoppers, driving 45 percent into retail stores to buy. Additionally, catalog browsers helped out e-commerce sales, sending 15 percent to Web sites to make purchases, and retail window-shoppers drove 17 percent of multi-channel shoppers to buy online.
Amazon.com to Start Selling Domain Names?
First Amazon.com patented the threaded discussion process, now they have paved the way to get into the domain-name business. Apparently the store that boasts of offering "Earth's Biggest Selection" wants to make sure that the offerings include domain names. And why not, one might ask -- you can already buy all the hardware and software needed to reach the Internet, so why not a domain -- especially if you are a third-party seller on the site. ICANN approved Amazon as a registrar last December and now lists the retailer in its list of accredited registrars. [Full story: Amazon Aiming at Third-Party Sales? - InternetNews]
European Consumers Beginning to Rival Americans' Internet Spending Habits
Europeans rival Americans as the Internet's biggest shopaholics, with the average wired European consumer splurging on items ranging from DVDs to airline tickets, according to a new study. The annual Cyberstudy on E-commerce, conducted by research firm RoperASW and AOL Time Warner's Internet arm, said during a three-month stretch last year between August and October European shoppers spent on average 430 euros, or about £295, per head online. During the same period, US consumers spent on average 543 euros worth of goods per head, the study said on Monday.
2002 Ecommerce Sales Reaches $45.6 Billion, Up 26.9 Percent Compared to 2001
A report from the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said that online retail sales in the last quarter of 2002 were up about 28 percent to $14.3 billion, compared to a total of $11.2 billion for the fourth quarter of 2001. Total e-commerce sales for 2002 were $45.6 billion, an increase of 26.9 percent from 2001. The fourth quarter 2002 e-commerce increased 29.3 percent from the third quarter of 2002, while total retail sales increased 5.1 percent from the prior quarter. However, ecommerce accounting for only 1.6 percent of total sales, up from 0.7 percent in 1999.