Women with children
spend more time on
the Internet and
do not have the same
shopping behaviours
as women
without children

The fact that Internet consumers are more and more mature led to a big increase of online sales in the first quarter of 2002

Two Europeans out of three will be online by 2006

In the same way, 60% of women without children indicated that they spend roughly the same amount of time watching television and surfing the Internet. This rate goes down to 54% for women with children.

And finally, please note that 53% of women with children spent over $100 in the last three months while as many as 63% of women without children spent the same amount of money.

The behavioural differences that can be noticed between women with children and women without children can partly be explained by the way they use the Internet.

Women without kids have a more utilitarian use of the Internet: 54% of them use the Internet to make travel arrangements, 41% of them surf the net to find a job and 20% to manage their stock quotes.

As for women with children, they tend to use the Internet for kids-related activities. 29% of the respondents indicated that they use the Internet to play games online and 29% indicated that they use it to download music.

Women online loyalty also prove very different depending on whether they have children or not.

This is how women without children prove more brand loyal when women with kids behave more as bargain hunters and look for online discounts. Only 27% of women with children indicated that they always select the best brands while this rate goes up to 34% among women without children.

These behavioural differences as well as the supremacy of the Internet over television constitute the main point that marketing managers should focus on in their communication policies.

Source : Jupiter MMXI

American online sales increased by 41% in the first quarter of 2002, compared to 1Q2001, according to a survey by Bizrate.com.

This increase is the most important one that was made for a whole year (four quarters), including the holiday shopping season.

It entails a radical behavioural change from Internet users.

Indeed, one cannot simply explain this fact by the growth of the Internet population alone. But the fact that part of this very population no longer hesitates to make online purchases is the main reason for such a spectacular growth.

Should this trend be confirmed, it would mean that the shopping potential that corresponds to the current online populations has not been reached yet, not by a long way: maturity of Internet users, the fact that online purchasing has become a trivial fact, increase of the quality of the sites in terms of eShopability, not to mention a higher quality of their products... all these elements put together should really get the merchandising Internet going, whether it is the BtoB or the BtoC.

France is not lagged behind as the ACSEL (Association pour le commerce et les services en ligne, made up of 200 members) just released its latest figures for the first quarter of 2002 and announced a 56% growth in the number of transactions that were made between the first quarter of 2002 and the first quarter of 2001 and a 65% growth in sales for the same period of time.

These figures apply to a panel made up of the twelve following web sites: fnac, Lastminute, La Redoute, Télémarket, Ooshop, ChateauOnline, Voyages-SNCF, Aquarelle, MisterGoodDeal, Chapitre.com, Surcouf and Alapage.

Cyber-retailers also predict that their growth in the second quarter of 2002, compared to the first quarter of 2002, should be around 19%.

If the reasons for this good result are the same as the American ones', please be aware that web sites such as lastminute.com and voyages-sncf are a determining factor in this panel. Please do not forget that the September attacks strongly affected the eTourism sector and the fact that, hardly a quarter later, these sites are far from being a liability for e-commerce web sites is a very promising element for the future of the national e-commerce.

Sources : Bizrate- Acsel-net.org

According to Forrester Research, the number of European Internet users should leap from 39% to 67% in the next five years, which means that as many as 200 million European users are expected to be online by 2006.

Only 19 percent of European consumers regularly accessed the Net via a PC in 1999.

Even if European Internet professionals might well feel a little disappointed by this rather slow start, especially if we compare it with the United-States, for instance, we must still admit that this growth is rather impressive as it took only a few years to convert most of the European population to the Internet ; this resulted in creating new buying behaviours, not to mention the establishment of new means of communication not only among people, but also among companies.

This rather modest start will also have an effect on the "quality" that can be expected from this Internet population. Indeed, what this means is that these online European consumers will be a very mixed bunch for many years still: indeed, it will be made up of trained Internet users who have been online for over three years, as well as some users who have only just started to make purchases on the Internet, not to mention real beginners.

As a result, European web sites will probably have no choice but to adopt complicated e-marketing strategies in the years to come, as they will have to deal with consumers with different buying behaviours and coming from different backgrounds, whether it is a matter of age or income.

One also needs to take into account the fact that, between now and 2006, most of the youngest population, that is already connected to the Internet today, will then be working and will constitute a category of trained Internet users who will then prove perfectly able to make purchases online, not only on the behavioural point of view but also on the financial one.

Source : Forrester Research