Online consumer confidence is increasing!

Online consumer confidence is
increasing!

E-commerce sales
rise to $4 billion in August 2001

The web universality stumbles more
often that could be thought
over frontiers

According to a survey conducted jointly by Yahoo! and ACNielsen that was released on September 24, 2001, the Internet confidence index designed by these two companies increased by 5% compared to June 2001.

Online spending increases

This survey expects online spending to reach $16 billion for the fourth quarter of 2001 compared with a projected $9.9 billion for the same period in the previous Index.

"Light users" influence confidence

Light Internet users happen to be one of the keys to the growth noticed in this confidence index as 43% among them indicate that they intend to shop online in the fourth quarter of 2001, compared with 29% last June.

Similar motivations however frequent the use of the Internet

One of the interests of this survey lies in the demonstration that both light and heavy users (those who use the Internet on a daily basis) share the same motivations when making an online purchase: high standard product information, ability to compare the products and a sufficiently large range of products.

The chart below clearly indicates that confidence applies to almost everybody on the American Web, no matter how often they use the Internet.

Nevertheless, light Internet users are those who strengthen users' general confidence.

Another element proves interesting: it regards projected online spending according to the type of Internet user, its gender and even its educational level.

Projected buying distributed between heavy and light users

The distinction between light and heavy users is made clearer here as light users project to increase their online spending by 159% when heavy users only intend to increase it by 45%.

Of course, these figures are coherent with the fact that as heavy users are already used to shopping online, it is quite natural that their shopping intentions' increasing rate appears weaker than the light users' one.

Social and demographic criteria

We can also notice, and this proves coherent with the length of time each gender has been spending on the Internet, that women project to increase their online shopping (91%) more than men (43%), and the same phenomenon can be seen according to the educational level.

These figures, if confirmed in the coming months, prove that the breeding ground for new online shoppers is still quite significant, which should make it easier to revive the Internet economy.

Source : ACNielsen

According to Forrester Research, online sales amounted to $4.04 billion in August 01, compared to $3.98 billion in July 01.

Even though this growth is quite small, it should still be compared to the online sales in June 01 that totalled $3.2 billion.

Here are some other elements of the Forrester Research survey: the number of American households that made an online purchase in August was 14.8 million and the average shopping cart per consumer was $272 in August compared to $247 in June 01.

Source : Forrester Research

Language, currency, taxation and…culture are just as many barriers that prevent web sites from expanding on the international level, to the exception of some sites such as eBay.com, which uses a "universal" business model.

This is how eBay.com recently announced that is made 14 percent of its total revenue outside the United-States in the second quarter of 2001.

As for Amazon.com, it made as much as 19% of its turnover outside the United-States and it seems that almost one-quarter of its customers are not American.

It seems as if things are not as quite as bad as one might think…except that it is easy to understand that if consumers from Europe or Asia are likely to buy from the United-States, the opposite is far from being true.

The U.S. e-commerce seems limited to the United-States for a good while still. Indeed, as far as European web sites are concerned, the only online international market still proves limited to the European Community…

Source : eCommerce Times