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Xmas: Saying Howdie
Study: Shopping dwarfed by flood of best wishes
By Jeremy Schlosberg
So was it a successful Christmas online in 2000?
Most journalists and analysts sort through the traffic reports and sales figures of the web’s retail sites to figure out an answer to this.
In so doing, however, they could be missing the real story about Christmas on the net, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The news is that even during Christmas—maybe especially during Christmas—Americans still see the internet primarily as a communication and information tool, not as a shopping mall.
"Generally, two important insights have been washed out in the tsunami of coverage of e-commerce," says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
"The first is that the internet is being used for social purposes that make people feel more connected to each other and to organizations that matter to them."
The study reports that 53 percent of internet users—some 51 million Americans—sent email during the holiday season that had to do with the holidays themselves in one way or another.
This was the single most popular thing Americans did online during the Christmas season.
By contrast, only 24 percent of internet users bought gifts online during the 2000 holiday season.
Rainie believes the study also demonstrates once and for all that focusing on sales as the only measure of success for online retailers is simplistic at best.
"Many people use the internet to gather information about purchases, but then close the deal in the bricks and mortar world," he says.
Fully 45 percent of users said they went online during the holidays to look for gift ideas and 32 percent compared prices.
And yet, as noted, just 24 percent went ahead and used the web to make the purchase.
As a matter of fact, even among people who did buy presents on the web, only 21 percent said they did most or all of their gift-buying online. Over half—52 percent—said they bought "only a few" gifts online. The other 28 percent said they bought "some" holiday presents over the internet.
And as another sign that people are not anywhere near ready to abandon traditional shopping habits, the study found that 22 percent of people who bought gifts online in 1999 did not buy anything online in 2000. At the same time, only 6 percent of internet users in 2000 said they were buying gifts online for the first time.
This latest study about online behavior during the holiday season backs up previous Pew studies that have shown that the internet has a much greater impact on people’s social lives than their wallets.
The seeming ease of shopping online does not impress the 85 percent of non-shopping internet users who say they don’t shop because they like to see and touch the presents they buy in person.
And there of course remains a large portion of non-shopping internet users—79 percent—who say they don’t shop because they have privacy and security concerns.
For all that the Pew study appears to reveal a deep-seated resistance among Americans to shopping on the web, Rainie thinks it simultaneously reveals the growing importance of the web to the retail business, provided the industry learns to take a more balanced view of the internet’s role.
"My guess is that a web presence won’t be optional for too many retail businesses soon, even though there is no evidence yet it can be a profit center for lots of firms," he says.
"Maybe the key for the foreseeable future is to shed the idea that it's all-or-nothing. The better way to think about it would be as a major tool for attracting customers and selling to them, but not the only tool."
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Web use over the holidays |
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Holiday activity |
Percentage of internet users who did it |
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Sent holiday-related email |
53 |
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Sought gift ideas online |
45 |
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Sent electronic holiday cards |
32 |
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Compared prices |
32 |
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Sought information on holiday crafts and/or recipes |
24 |
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Bought gifts online |
24 |
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Researched religious information |
14 |
| Source:
Pew Internet & American Life Project
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-Jeremy Schlosberg is senior editor for new media.
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