875MM Consumers Have Shopped Online - Up 40% in Two Years

More than 85 percent of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase - increasing the market for online shopping by 40 percent in the past two years - according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, reports MarketingCharts.

Globally, more than half of internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month, according to Nielsen. (See chart of internet users who have purchased online, by region.)

“When The Nielsen Company conducted its first global survey into internet shopping trends two years ago, approximately 10 percent of the world’s population (627 million) had shopped online,” said Bruce Paul, vp, customized research, Nielsen U.S. “Within two years, this number has increased by approximately 40 percent (to 875 million).”

Among the findings issued by Nielsen:

• Among internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is in South Korea, where 99 percent of those with internet access have used it to shop, followed by the U.K. (97 percent), Germany (97 percent), Japan (97 percent); the U.S. is eighth, at 94 percent.
• In South Korea, 79 percent of these internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the U.K. (76 percent) and Switzerland (67 percent); the U.S. is at 57 percent.
• Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the internet are books (41 percent purchased in the previous three months), clothing/accessories/shoes (36 percent), videos/DVDs/games (24 percent), airline tickets (24 percent) and electronic equipment (23 percent). (See chart of most popular types of items purchased online.)
• Among U.S. internet users, in the previous month 41 percent had bought clothing/shoes/accessories, 38 percent bought books and one in three internet shoppers bought videos/DVDs/games.
• The number of internet consumers buying books over the internet has increased 7 percent in the past two years, but the biggest increase has been in clothing/accessories/shoes, which increased from 20 percent to 36 percent. (See charts of top 10 online retailers in Dec. ‘07 and top 10 apparel/beauty retailers in Dec. ‘07)
• Internet shopper interest in buying videos/DVDs and airline tickets/reservations over the internet rose two and three percentage points, respectively, in the past two years; today, one in four online shoppers globally said they had purchased these on the internet in the previous three months.
• One in four global internet users bought DVDs/videos online in the previous three months, with U.K. users topping the list (44 percent), followed by South Africans (38 percent). The U.S. was fifth at 31 percent.
• Online shoppers tend to stick to the shopping sites they are familiar with, with 60 percent saying they buy mostly from the same site. (See chart of methods that internet users rely on to select shopping sites.)
• In selecting sites on which to shop, one-third used a search engine or just surfed around to find the best online store. One in four relied on personal recommendations.

MarketingCharts provides some additional findings from the study.