• by December 15, 2000

On-time delivery is a top concern for 2000 holiday shoppers. On-time delivery was respondents' #1 concern (56%) about online shopping this year, according to King, Brown & Partners (KB&P) results of an Internet research study measuring consumer online purchasing attitudes and behavior for the 2000 holiday shopping season. Other top concerns include security issues (44%) and product availability (39%).

Holiday shoppers plan to buy at the same sites as last year. Seventy-nine percent of respondents who purchased last holiday season were "very" or "somewhat" likely to buy from the same sites again, with 46% being "very likely."

E-customers are willing to buy from new sites but are reluctant to buy from sites they've never heard about. Half (55%) of those likely to shop this season would be "very" or "somewhat" likely to purchase from sites they've never purchased from before. However, 79% said it was "very" or "somewhat" important to recognize or be familiar with a website's name when purchasing online.

Consumers are comfortable with "pure play" sites, but "clicks and bricks" models have several advantages. More than half (63%) were either indifferent or felt it was not important that websites have a physical store location. However, a bricks component was important when purchasing bigger-ticket items as computers, home video and audio equipment, cameras and cellular phones.

Incidentally, eight of the top ten retail-site gainers on the Media Metrix Online Shopping Index for the week ending Dec. 10, 2000 were traditional offline brands: Eddiebauer.com, Radioshack.com, Walmart.com, Columbiahouse.com, Bluelight.com, Barnesandnoble.com, Intuit.com and Nordstrom.com.

Books reclaimed the top ranking among retail subcategories for week three of the holiday-shopping season, surpassing the computer category, which held the number-one spot the week prior with 2.4 million average daily unique visitors.

"As the countdown begins for the final days of this year's holiday-shopping season, online shoppers are increasingly turning to familiar brands with offline origins," said Anne Rickert, measurement analyst with Media Metrix.

"Traditional retailers like Walmart, Eddie Bauer and Nordstrom are helping online consumers access a wider range of non-standardized merchandise such as apparel, housewares, furniture, health and beauty items."