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the new hot demo
They surf more, they buy more, they spend more
By Marty Beard
Give a kid a poky dial-up internet connection and he'll surf the web for a day, but give him a broadband connection and he'll surf the web forever.
That's the thrust of a recent study from Forrester Research.
The study concludes that teenage users of broadband internet access do, see, and buy more while they are online compared to kids who have to use slower connections.
That makes them a very attractive demographic for advertisers, according to the study.
“Broadband-enabled youth have allure because they engage in more net behaviors, fully embrace web shopping, and buy more digital products online,” the report says.
That kids make up the country’s most avid internet users is no secret. According to the 2000 Census, 90 percent of kids have internet access, thanks to efforts to get schools wired.
According to the Forrester report, of kids who have some way to go online, 43 percent have access to a high-speed connection. Among young broadband users, 89 percent have access to a broadband connection from home.
Young internet users with high-speed connections spend five more hours a week connected to the internet than their dial-up counterparts.
That the broadband-blessed spend so much time online translates to wider participation in just about all online activities, from researching to shopping, playing games and communicating.
But especially shopping: 47 percent of broadband-using youths have bought something online within the past three months, compared to 39 percent of teenage internet users who log on with dial-up connections.
Young broadband users are 20 percent more likely than their slowpoke counterparts to have consummated an online purchase, meaning that they’re likelier to have clicked on the “buy” button on an e-commerce site.
Broadband-using kids are 31 percent more likely than young dial-up users to buy high-end merchandise such as software, computer hardware, or consumer electronics.
Additionally, teenage broadband users have more money on hand than kids who dial up. They have 25 percent more disposable income. And broadband-using kids who have purchased something online in the past three months spent 26 percent more than kids using dial-up.
In terms of leisure activities, kids with broadband connections are twice as likely as kids who go online via dial-up connections to use streaming video, if only because slow dial-up connections don’t work quite as well with streaming video.
Young broadband users are 28 percent more likely to play games online, 22 percent more inclined to go online to read product reviews, and 15 percent more inclined to log onto corporate-presence web sites.
Both dial-up and broadband-using kids are highly likely to engage in online activities such as checking web-based email, instant messaging, using search engines and visiting portals, with more than half of both dial-up and broadband users doing these things.
The only activity in which young dial-up users outdo broadband users is entering sweepstakes, according to the study, which likely reflects the slightly higher economic standing of the broadband-enabled kids.
January 31, 2002
© 2002 Media Life
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