Purchase Bulleted List
Online Seeking And Purchasing
- "Other Services" has now risen to the top of the list of products sought after and purchased on the web indicating that our question needs some revision. (If you have suggestions, please let us know.) For choices which do occur in this question, respondents seek information about hardware and software over $50 (61% and 58%, respectively) and about software under $50 (57%). These are the same top three as in the last survey. However, travel and books/magazines have surpassed hardware under $50 in terms of the percentage of respondents looking for information about these items. For items actually purchased over the web, books/magazines are the most common (30%) followed by software under $50 (30%) and travel (26%). Overall, respondents seek information on the web about various items alot more often than they actually make purchases. The items which are purchased most frequently are not the same items that respondents seek information about most frequently.
Past Purchases
- For our respondents, online shopping is still not a common activity with 44% saying that they hardly ever make purchases on line. Mail-order shopping is more common, but still not very frequent. On the other hand, just over half of respondents (51%) shop at retail stores more than once a week.
Seeking Across Mediums
- This question asked whether or not the respondent had sought information inthe last six months about each of the items listed in each of the three media (Online, Direct Mail, and Newspapers/Magazines). For the top three categories (ignoring "Other Services"), hardware and software over $50 and software under $50, online information is sought just as often as newspaper/magazine information. Travel information is sought more often online than in newspapers. Direct mail is the least frequently used source of the three.
Sources Used In Purchasing
- Commercial online services (like AOL) are used infrequently by our respondeds for making purchasing decisions. Interestingly, offline sources such as magazines and newspapers are the most frequently used with 75% of respondents using them at least once a month. Frequency of use varies widely for both commercial and non-commercial web sites.
Total Spending On WWW Purchases
- This question was changed somewhat from previous surveys in that it only asked about past spending on the web. Also, the categories were changed to higher dollar amounts.
The largest category of respondents has spent less than $50 (US) on the web (34%) while the next largest category has spent $100-$500 (24%). 16% of respondents have spent over $500 on the web in the last six months. These figures are consistent with the previous survey.
Copyright 1997
Georgia Tech Research Corporation
Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0415
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Usage RestrictionsFor more information or to submit comments:
send e-mail to www-survey@cc.gatech.edu.GVU's WWW Surveying Team
Graphics, Visualization, & Usability Center
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280