| aconcagua adventure - "The U.S. share in 2005 is actually more in line with its position in the offline economy, representing the shift in e-commerce from an emerging market to a more mainstream industry," said Carol Glasheen, vice president of IDC's Global Market Models and Demand-Side Research program. Growth in e-commerce in all regions will be healthy, but Asia-Pacific and Western Europe will grow the fastest between 2000 and 2005.
According to the First Quarter 2001 Global Internet Trends report from Nielsen//NetRatings, one in six European adults used the Internet to seek pricing or product information for products and services. One in 11 adults actually made an online purchase in the same period. Denmark,
Sweden and Switzerland led the region in terms of Web-based browsing and purchasing, while Belgium/Luxembourg, Italy and Spain had relatively few people browsing or purchasing via the Internet.
with browsing to purchase rates highest in Britain, Norway and Sweden.
Italians and Spanish, on the other hand, are more reluctant than other Europeans to buy after having sought |
product information online. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, only Sweden comes close to the United States, where 74 percent of all Web surfers shop online each month and 30 percent buy online.
In the Asia-Pacific region, adults in Australia and New Zealand are most likely to use the Internet to seek information about products and services, with one in four adults turning to the Net. Purchasing online is also common in Australia and New Zealand, as well as South Korea. Only a very small proportion of people in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have bought goods and services online.
"If a South Korean browses the Internet for information on goods or services, he or she is much more likely to buy than is the case in other countries," said Richard Goosey, chief of measurement science and analytics for ACNielsen eRatings.com. "Three in five South Koreans who browse convert that investigation into a purchase. By contrast, only one-third of adults from Hong Kong or Taiwan who browse for information then go on to buy."
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