The number of people buying goods on the internet has more than doubled since the beginning of the year, according to Experian.
The survey reveals that people are starting to buy more frequently on the internet with 1.45 million consumers making four or more purchases since January and with the most popular items being holidays, books, computer games and music.
Key findings are:
- the proportion of the UK population buying over the web in the last 12 months has more than doubled from 2.26 million adults, at the beginning of 2000 to 4.7 million adults now
- some 3.3% of the UK adult population – around 1.45 million people – have made four or more purchases since the start of the year. At the same time, the proportion of adults that has bought just once in the last 12 months has decreased from 35% to 27%, but the proportion purchasing four or more times in the last 12 months has increased by more than a quarter from 24% to 31%
- holidays, books, computer games and music remain the most popular purchases. Holiday purchasing is up a fifth – from 14% to 17% of online purchases
- internet shoppers are mainly younger and wealthier people
- many online shoppers do not consider the internet a valuable educational resource (37%), while just 22% said that it was valuable. The remainder (41%) was neutral on this question.
