In 2008, Germany posted the highest proportion of online buyers in Europe, with 73%, but TNS found that France was above the average, with 58% of respondents buying goods or services online.
For the first time since the introduction of the .travel top-level domain, premium .travel names will be made available for sale at auction. The keyword-centric premium domains include City.travel, Europe.travel, Fly.travel, Free.travel, Information.travel, Kids.travel, Money.travel, Luggage.travel, Pictures.travel, TripPlanner.travel, and HotDeals.travel.
The names were auctioned on January 29, 2009. The domain name market has established the premium value of short, generic domain names in a variety of top-level domains. Since .travel was launched in 2005, every major travel brand worldwide has adopted .travel names, and destination travel providers, including Argentina, Egypt, Utah, Cancun, and Sri Lanka, are marketing themselves exclusively through their .travel names. (For Immediate Release, January 2009)
eMarketer has made its prediction for eCommerce in 2009. Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4% in 2009-the first full year to feel the impact of the economic crisis. Over the long term, online sales growth has been on a downward slope as the number of online buyers approaches saturation. Most retail e-commerce sales growth in the future will come from increased spending by consumers who have long been online buyers. (eMarketer, December 2008)
Aldi supermarket has teamed up with On Holiday Group and Eurotours International to provide resort, city and ski accommodation for an online venture that will be launched in January. A new website, alditravel.co.uk, will feature 150 of the best deals.
Six top deals will also be featured in fortnightly leaflets distributed through Aldi’s 440 shops in the UK. Consumers will be directed to book online. The leaflets will include the hotel price with an indication of what the overall package will cost when bought online.
The new venture will have Abta bonding through On Holiday Group’s membership of the association. In addition, it will offer the supplier failure cover recently launched by Rock Insurance. Aldi’s travel website has been developed by Click with Technology.
The move into travel is not a first for Aldi. It is already the number two travel retailer in Austria where its tie-up with Eurotours started five years ago and now sells 250,000 holidays a year.
Aldi and the two suppliers will decide which deals they want to feature on the website and in the leaflet and, as with its grocery products, there will be a limited number. (MICE-Contact, November 2008)
Brazil's 79% of users who have purchased online is in the upper reaches of worldwide rates, comparable to such advanced internet players as Japan (82%), the UK (79%) and Germany (78%), according to a December 2007 study by Symantec. In contrast, only 63% of US internet users have made an online purchase. Simply put, Brazilians who use the internet tend to use it for everything, including ecommerce.
Adult internet users in selected countries who have made a purchase online (at least sometimes), December 2007 (% of respondents):
- Japan: 82%
- UK: 79%
- Brazil: 79%
- Germany: 78%
- Australia: 76%
- China: 71%
- France: 66%
- US: 63%
The gross transaction value of mobile payments for digital goods, such as music and games, and physical goods, such as books, is forecast to exceed $300 billion worldwide by 2013, according to Juniper Research.
Juniper's figures found that there is a significant and immediate opportunity for mobile payment services, systems, software and supporting services to underpin the processing of these payment transactions.
Juniper expects mobile ticketing services to deliver around 40% of the predicted global transaction value by 2013, driven by consumer usage on rail, air and bus networks as well as sports and entertainment events.
Also, the Far East and Western Europe will represent over 60% of the $300 billionn spend overall, within the forecast time frame. Juniper claims that while Western Europe is already comfortable with digital goods and services sold via SMS, the Far East and China region, as well as Japan, is already well established in physical sales of goods over the mobile web.
However, the research goes against findings from security specialist Unisys, which suggests that consumers remain wary of using their mobile phones as payment mechanisms, driven by concerns over security. Of more than 13,000 mobile subscribers from 14 countries surveyed in March, 71% said that they would not consider using a mobile device to bank or shop online. (
Telecoms.com, July 2008)
Half of US adult e-mail users surveyed in April 2008 for
Merkle's "View from the Inbox" study, conducted with
Harris Interactive, said they had made an online purchase in the previous year as a result of permission-based marketing.
In addition, e-mail was second only to customer reviews on Web sites for influencing online purchases, according to
DoubleClick Performics' "Green Marketing Study," conducted by
Opinion Research Corporation in February 2008. E-mail was roughly equal to search results in terms of influencing online purchases.
On the other hand, consumers are increasingly willing to revoke permission that they have previously granted and that the bar for relevance remains high. About one-third of respondents in the Merkle study also said they had stopped doing business with at least one company as a result of poor e-mail marketing practices.
In the same vein, more than half of US adult e-mail users told Merkle in 2007 that they were only willing to get marketing or promotional messages in status or transactional e-mails if the offers were relevant to them. (
eMarketer, April 2008)
The US trails emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Russia in the adoption of activities including blogging, social networking and video-sharing, according to new
Universal McCann data presented at the
Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think 2008 conference.
The agency said that China had already passed the US in the number of people starting their own blogs, at 43 million compared to 26.4 million in the US. Online social network membership in countries such as Brazil, Russia, Taiwan and Mexico was said to be growing at more than 70% annually, compared with less than 49% in the US.
In the US, the fastest-growing user-generated content categories since the start of 2008 were watching online video, downloading podcasts, and subscribing to an RSS feed.
UGC activities among US internet users, 2008 (% of respondents):
- Watched an online video clip: 70%
- Downloaded a podcast: 30%
- Subscribed to RSS feeds: 20%
Even if advertising in particular doesn't end up as the main marketing tactic for UGC, the content's popularity is likely to keep marketers interested. For instance, user-generated online video views continue to grow by about 50% annually, according to
Accustram iMedia Research data.
eMarketer estimates that 39% of online video viewers watch user-generated videos at least once a month. That's more than watch full episodes of TV online.
The same percentage of respondents to a December 2007
ChoiceStream study said they watched user-generated video on devices other than television sets, compared with about two-thirds who said they watched professionally-produced content. (
eMarketer, April 2008)
More than 85% of the world's internet users surveyed have purchased something online, according to
The Nielsen Company's "Global Online Survey on internet Shopping Habits," conducted in October and November 2007. The research company said that more than half of internet users had made at least one purchase online within the past month.
An emerging middle class and alternative online payment options are spurring online buying in large developing e-commerce economies like China and India, according to eMarketer.
Online buyer penetration among internet users worldwide, by region, October-November 2007 (% of respondents):
- Western Europe: 93%
- North America: 92%
- Asia-Pacific: 84%
- Latin America: 79%
- Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa: 67%
- Worldwide: 86%
Two years ago, approximately 10% of the world's population (627 million) had shopped online, according to Nielsen US’s vice president of customized research. This number has increased by approximately 40% to 875 million.
More than 4 out of 10 online buyers worldwide (41%) had purchased books from a web merchant within the past three months. Clothing (36%) was the next most popular online purchasing category. Travel was the fourth most popular online purchasing category (airline tickets/reservations 24%).
Travel is often one of the first retail categories to succeed in developing ecommerce economies, according to eMarketer. Positive consumer experiences booking travel online creates confidence that can lead to purchases in other more complex e-commerce categories.
Worldwide retail ecommerce is projected to grow through 2010, though at a decreasing rate of growth, according to
JPMorgan's "Nothing But Net" report. The investment firm predicted that retail ecommerce would bring in over $700 billion in 2010. (
eMarketer, February 2008)
Mobile marketing revenue is expected to grow to more than $24 billion worldwide in 2013, from $1.8 billion in 2007, according to
ABI Research's "Mobile Marketing and Advertising" report.
Mobile is no longer off-limits in the minds of advertisers but is instead seen as a very personal way to reach consumers who can be incentivized through information services and compelling content, as well as through more directly relevant and targeted messaging, according to ABI Research.
More than half of survey respondents said they were totally opposed to mobile marketing messages, yet 70% of those same respondents said that incentives such as ringtones or free songs might make them receptive to mobile marketing. (
eMarketer, January 2008)
Customer product reviews are increasing retail ecommerce conversion rates, site traffic and average order values, according to
e-consultancy and
Bazaarvoice's "Social Commerce Report 2007" report.
Asked about the effects of customer ratings on their Web sites, over half of online retailers in the UK, the US and Europe said their overall conversion rates had gone up in the past year, compared with only 9% who said they fell. Over ¾ said their site traffic had increased. Only 5% said it had fallen. Average order values rose for 42% of the responding online retailers, and only 6% said they had decreased.
E-consultancy and Bazaarvoice found that:
- 28% of online sellers were using customer ratings and reviews. More than half said they were considering it.
- More than half of all online sellers considered user-generated content either extremely important or very important to company strategy over the next year.
- Nearly 8 in 10 online sellers thought a major benefit of such reviews was to increase conversions, while 73% thought improved customer retention and loyalty were major benefits. Nearly 6 in 10 thought the fact that customer reviews improved search engine optimization was a major benefit (multiple answers were permitted).
- Nearly all survey respondents thought ratings and reviews were either extremely helpful or very helpful "as consumers."
Online shoppers use customer reviews particularly for complicated products, according to the
American Marketing Association's "Mplanet" survey. The association ranked online resources used for product information during last year's holiday season. Online consumer reviews mattered most in complex and high-ticket categories such as automotive (19%) and consumer electronics (17%). Consumers first turned to search engines (43%) and direct visits to company sites (29%) for product information, regardless of product category. (
eMarketer, August 2007)
Social networking sites are not generating significant online retail sales for companies looking to exploit the growing phenomenon. The networking sites have little influence on where people go to shop online, according to a US survey by Jupiter Research. Only 12% of online shoppers surveyed said they buy more than planned as a result of using a social networking site.
The analyst's US Retail Consumer Survey, 2007 also found 53% of online shoppers go straight to the site they want to buy from, rather than being directed there by a social network site. Just 3% said they use blogs as a route to online shops.
But the report indicates social networking sites serve to reaffirm purchasing decisions, with 29% of respondents saying they make better decisions using them. (
Silicon.com, July 2007)
Payments made by mobile phone will reach $22 billion by 2011, according to
Juniper Research's "Mobile Payment Strategies & Markets 2007-2011" report. Most of the 204 million mobile phone users making payments with their phones by 2011 will use SMS (text-to-pay). However, over 52 million mobile phones will have contactless chips, which will let them make physical payments.
Juniper said that the technology is available now to enable secure and fast payments to be initiated on the mobile phone. The business model stills needs some work but there are positive signals emanating from the industry that will create considerable revenue for all parts of the ecosystem. (
eMarketer, July 2007)
Over ¾ of consumers in the Middle East are online, and just over half use credit cards as their online payment method of choice, according to
MasterCard's "Consumer Lifestyles" survey. The survey covered consumer activity in the second half of 2006, and specifically included the Levant geographical region.
Debit cards were the second most popular way for people in the region to pay for online purchases. Nearly 3 in 10 consumers used debit cards in the second half of 2006, up from 9% in the first half of the year.
The percentage of online buyers in Egypt rose to 7% during the second half of 2006, up from just 1% in the first half. Online buyers in Lebanon rose to nearly a third of the population, up from 26% in the first half of 2006.
The percentage of people who made a purchase online in the second half of 2006 actually decreased in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, falling to 13% from 20%, to 1% from 12% and to 19% from 25%, respectively. (
eMarketer, June 2007)
Online reviews written by fellow shoppers help convert consumers who research shopping decisions online, according to a January 2007 study by
MarketingSherpa and
Prospectiv.
Nearly 6 in 10 respondents "strongly" or "somewhat" preferred sites with peer-written product reviews, while only 14% did not trust such reviews. Results were the same regardless of whether shoppers made their actual purchases online or off.
The study also listed case studies of firms whose conversion rates improved after adding customer reviews. In one example, top-rated products converted at a 49% higher rate after PETCO added customer reviews to its site. Shoppers who navigated through the ratings section spent 63% more than shoppers using other navigation. The average order size of PETCO shoppers who read reviews and shopped using review ratings links was 40% higher than that of the firm's typical shopper. (
eMarketer, May 2007)
Online buyers can pay with something other than credit and debit cards at a growing number of large retail sites, according to
Brulant. Of the 100 largest online retail sites surveyed by Brulant in October 2006 and again in February 2007, 76% accepted only credit and debit cards as payment. However, 24% of major online retailers offered non-traditional payment methods such as Bill Me Later, Google Checkout and PayPal.
Retailers that offer alternative payment options typically offer only one. None of the sites offered all three. (
eMarketer, April 2007)
Last Updated on Tuesday, 09 February 2010 10:54
