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broadband people
Account for a surprising share of e-commerce $s
By Toni Fitzgerald
When it comes to the rise of the internet, broadband has always been seen as the big river to cross before the web would be truly mainstream.
Understandably, as with all things web, the users leading the migration away from the dial-up connection are the best and brightest, the most educated and the most affluent.
So it's no big surprise that they are also bigger online shoppers.
What is surprising is how this is the case.
A new study from Scarborough Research finds that broadband users spend more money online, and shop online more often, than the internet population as a whole.
Though broadband users represent just 19 percent of the online population, they account for 31 percent of online spending, the study found.
Last year, the nation’s 23 million broadband users purchased nearly $5 billion worth of the $15 billion total goods sold online. That’s an average of more than $200 per person.
Broadband users are twice as likely as the average internet user to spend $2,500 or more online in a year.
With broadband prices at nearly double that of dial-up, it makes sense that broadband users would be more affluent and willing to spend money than the average users.
But Scarborough Research vice president for internet and print sales Gary Meo says that the scale of the disproportionate spending surprises him.
“We’ve found that people who have broadband access tend to have been online longer and spend more time online,” he says. “They’re more comfortable with the online experience, and more likely perhaps to make a purchase.”
Broadband users certainly are more likely than dial-up users to buy big-ticket items. They are 39 percent more likely to purchase jewelry online and 64 percent more likely to purchase cars, trucks or SUVs.
That’s all very good news for online advertising, not only because it offers a group to target, but also because broadband offers big opportunities for expansion into rich media.
At a recent conference, Jupiter Research said that paid search and adoption of broadband are the two main drivers for online advertising.
“Part of it has to do with the fact that broadband opens up a number of new and creative avenues for advertisers, where they can include more graphics and more rich media content,” Meo says.
It may also drive a quicker adoption of rich media on newspaper and magazine sites, which already increasingly offer such options.
According to Scarborough, broadband users are 68 percent more likely than the average internet user to have read a magazine online and 40 percent more likely to have read a newspaper online in the past 30 days.
“I think that people will have a tendency to move towards broadband and that will help drive the continued growth and adoption of broadband,” Meo says. “The online experience is richer in a broadband context than in a dial-up context.”
August 7, 2003© 2003 Media Life
-Toni Fitzgerald is a staff writer for Media Life.
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