Friday, April 27, 2001

Nearly 50% of Americans Purchase Online

Nielsen//NetRatings, the world’s fastest growing Internet audience measurement service, and Harris Interactive, a global leader in Internet-based market research, today reported that nearly half, or 100.2 million people, of the U.S. adult population have made a purchase online.

Findings from the Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive eCommercePulse, collected from a March 2001 online survey of 39,000 Web users, found that eCommerce has hit mainstream, drawing online purchases from 48.2 percent of all Americans over 18 years old, or 100.2 million people. Furthermore, more than 81.2 percent of all adults with Web access have made a purchase online since they started using the Internet.

"Online shopping is not trivial when more than 80 percent of all Web surfers and nearly one out of every two Americans are involved — eCommerce has gone mainstream," said Sean Kaldor, vice president of eCommerce at NetRatings.

Online Spending in March 2001
More than $3.5 billion was spent online in March 2001, jumping 35.6 percent from $2.6 billion in April 2000. Two product categories accounted for more than half of this growth. Online travel spiked 58.5 percent to more than one billion dollars in March 2001, while clothing and apparel jumped 122.3 percent to $368 million.

"Despite challenges in the U.S. economy, online spending is holding strong, even gaining four percentage points from February to March 2001," said Kaldor.

Amazon Leads Top E-Tailers in Purchaser Share
Amazon led the eCommerce market in March, garnering 15.1 percent of all online buyers. eBay followed closely with 14.5 percent of all online purchasers, while BMG Music’s share was 4.3 percent. Barnes & Noble (3.8 percent) and Columbia House (3.7 percent) rounded out the top five rankings.

"While Amazon commands much of the attention in e-tailing, eBay attracts nearly as many customers," said Kaldor. "In fact, adding eBay’s numbers to its subsidiary Half.com shows it has more customers online than any other merchant."

eHealth Traffic Dependent on Search Engines and Portals
Traffic on individual eHealth sites is critically dependent on how quickly and easily the sites are found and listed by portals and search engines. Almost 100 million adults, coined by Harris Interactive as "Cyberchondriacs," go online to look for health care information. On average, they do this three times a month. Typically they navigate these sites using a portal or search engine rather than by going directly to a particular site. Only one in four goes directly to an eHealth website.

These are the results of a nationwide Harris Interactive survey of 675 adults who are online from home, office, school, library or some other location. Respondents were surveyed for The Harris Poll by telephone between March 22 and 26, 2001.

Key findings of this survey include:

- 75% of all adults online (47% of all adults) use the Internet to look for health care information. However, only 16% say they do this "often", while most do so "sometimes" (30%), or "hardly ever" (30%).

- This 75% of all those online amounts to just under 100 million adults nationwide.

- On average those who look for health care information online do so 3.3 times every month. This varies from 6.1 times among heavy Internet users to 1.3 times among light users.

- A slender 52% majority of those who look for health care information do so using a portal or search engine that allows them to search for the health information they seek across many different websites. About a quarter (24%) go directly to a site that focuses only on health-related topics and one in six (16%) go first to a general site that focuses on many topics that may have a section on health issues.

Results indicated that more heavy Internet users (57%) and medium users (56%) than light users (44%) use a search engine or a portal.