It's spend, spend, spend on the web

Nearly 40 per cent of UK web users have bought goods online in the last three months.

But although they buy items for both the business and the home, they often still use the internet for gathering preliminary information and comparing products.

These are the findings of a large study carried out in the UK, France and Germany by NOP. The research was sponsored by Hewlett Packard, KPMG and VNU Business Publications - the parent company of vnunet.com. Over 4600 people were questioned across the three countries.

Web use, in general, is surprisingly high in all three countries. Some 38 per cent in the UK say they access the internet at least once a day. In Germany, the figure is 40 per cent, while France registers even higher at 43 per cent.

UK citizens use the internet most, with 31 per cent of the total population over the age of 14 now online. But this figure is also growing more rapidly than elsewhere too - it climbed 14 per cent over the last year compared with Germany, which saw nine per cent growth and France, which increased by four per cent.

In absolute terms, there are more Germans on the internet - 19.1 million compared to 15.2 million in the UK and 8.3 million in France. But about half of all respondents said they access the web mostly from home, while a quarter go online at work.

And more and more women are now surfing the net. The UK has the highest proportion of female users at 44 per cent compared to 38 per cent in France and 34 per cent in Germany. But French women have been embracing the web particularly avidly over the last year.

The average age of users in all three countries is also climbing, possibly as late adopters start coming onboard. In the UK, the average is 33.7 years, 32.4 in Germany and 30.6 in France. But a particularly high proportion of surfers in France are students, which brings the average age down there.

Such findings are also reflected in users' spending power, however. Only 10 per cent of French people online have a household income equivalent to more than £31,250. In Germany, the figure is 17 per cent and in the UK, 29 per cent, which means the country has the highest proportion of affluent surfers.

To buy or not to buy
As a result, 39 per cent of UK web users say they have purchased products or services online in the last three months, compared to 27 per cent in Germany and 19 per cent in France. Websites are also used for information on making off-line purchases.

Some 74 per cent of UK surfers say they've visited websites to help with purchasing decisions, and the picture is similar elsewhere, with 65 per cent doing likewise in France and 78 per cent in Germany.

But a more detailed look at purchasing behaviour suggests that once people start buying goods online, some of them become very enthusiastic. When asked to estimate how often they'd done this since they obtained access to the internet, people showed big differences in behaviour.

The results are based on an average answer (the mean) and the most typical, middle-of-the-road answer (the median).

For business related goods in the UK, the mean number of purchases is 113, but the median is six, suggesting that a small group of 'super-purchasers' is boosting the average. The pattern is similar but less marked for home related buys, with a mean of 29 and a median of six.So what other information vehicles are losing out as the world moves increasingly online? Television seems to be the major casualty, with 15 per cent of web users in the UK, 16 per cent in France and 20 per cent in Germany reporting that they are watching less.

Other activities have benefited, however. There's been a small rise in the amount that people watch videos in the UK, listen to the radio in France and read computer magazines in all three countries.

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