While most online shoppers are Americans, about 88 percent of Internet customers in the U.S., Australians beat them in terms of frequency of buying online, according to a study.
Scott Ewing, a senior research fellow at Melbourne's Swinburne University of Technology, found that 25 percent of Australian online customers buy weekly while only 17 percent of their American counterparts do so. Only 10 percent of Europeans, Israelis and Japanese shop online weekly.
The weekly spending by Australians amount to an average $206 with those aged 50 to 64 making online purchases worth $157 to $258 per month. The increasing spending by older Australians indicates they are conversant with online shopping and trust online purchasing.
The findings are parts of the 2011 Australian component of the World Internet Project and were also submitted to the Productivity Commission as part of its inquiry about the retail industry.
The U.S. has more online customers than any other countries followed by Australia and Sweden.
Australians were the world's second most avid internet searchers for information about consumer products, similar to the Swedes and well ahead of the Japanese, the study says.
Another interesting finding of Ewing is that more Australians search the Internet for something to buy before visiting a store, where they will buy the chosen item.
"Our research indicates that online retail will continue to grow steadily rather than spectacularly," Powerretail.com quoted Ewing as saying.
Source: au.ibtimes
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