December 2011 - Issue #14
Frequent online shoppers
Story by a staff writer
View articles in related topics: Computing, Business & Workplace, Information Technology
Australians lead the world when it comes to frequency of internet purchases, according to Swinburne Senior Research Fellow Scott Ewing.
However, online shopping is not the main cause of the current retail trade downturn, says Mr Ewing, who is the lead researcher on the Australian component of the World Internet Project.
“In fact, the Australian spend on the internet has not grown in the past two years. More Australians look for products online and then go and buy them at a store rather than the reverse, which is what many retailers fear,” says Mr Ewing, who provided the findings to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into the retail industry. The data shows:
- 78 per cent of Australians regularly shop on the web (compared with 88 per cent of Americans)
- 25 per cent buy online at least once a week (compared with 17 per cent of Americans and less than 10 per cent of Europeans, Israelis and Japanese)
- almost 60 per cent pay bills via the internet
- about 50 per cent buy event tickets over the internet
- the value of internet purchases by Australians has remained stable at $206 a month for the past two years
- online spending in younger age groups has remained steady or even declined in the past four years
- shoppers aged 50 to 64 increased their average spend to $258 a month and those over 65 increased online spend to $135 a month.
