• by November 27, 2000

Traffic to online shopping sites may be soaring, but the opinions of 20,000 online users can't be discounted and they point to a virtual requiem for many Internet retailers this holiday season.

That's according to a just released survey by BIGresearch that polled online users regarding their shopping intentions this holiday season. The study was conducted November 8th through 14th with over 20,000 online users.

One of the major findings of the study showed 51% of online users plan to shop online this year. However, 72.9% did not name a destination site of choice for their shopping.

"Based upon the almost 73% of uncommitted online shoppers, and no evidence that we missed a significant commodity category, we may infer that shoppers have bought into the virtual value of the Internet that presupposes time is on their side," said Dr. Joe Pilotta, VP of Research.

"The uncommitted are postponing their decisions until the last minute which may lead into a virtual liability for the novice Internet buyers and the e-tailer. This is a failure of dot-com marketing. The dot-coms need to customize the mass audience and the tools are out there to do so. They need to move from a producer economy to a demand economy," said Pilotta.

While overall online expenditures are projected to increase, the number of uncommitted shoppers may disburse expenditures over a greater number of sites or fall through the cracks entirely.

Other findings from the study were: - 38.8% of the online shoppers are between the ages of 14-34.

- 46.7% of the online shoppers are between the ages of 35-54.

- 80.3% of first time online shoppers will spend less than 30% of their holiday budgets online.

- 61.8% of those who bought online last year said they would spend the same or less this year and only 37.8% said they would spend more.

Amazon.com, E-bay and E-toys were the top sites named by online shoppers who had a preference.

The study was the first annual online survey on online shoppers by BIGresearch.