Consumers spend a lot of time making online purchases, which now garners a large share of their total shopping budgets. Moreover, consumers describe online shopping as a necessity.
And a lot of consumers are making online buys while in bed as well as while in a physical store.
These are just a few of the conclusions from a recently released survey and report from e-commerce platform provider Bigcommerce. The study, which was done in partnership with Kelton Global, surveyed over 1,000 U.S. consumers to assess their online shopping and buying habits. The company said the “results show that 96 percent of Americans are shopping online, spending an average of five hours per week making online purchases and allocating an average of 36 percent of their shopping budgets to e-commerce.”
The authors of the study said those polled “ranked online shopping ahead of smartphone GPS and streaming media as a basic essential they could not live without.”
Troy Cox, senior product director at Bigcommerce, said “shoppers are dedicating more of their time and budget to online shopping, and the frequency and number of online stores they purchase from has grown exponentially during the past few years. With e-commerce now such a prevalent part of America’s buying habits, retailers have an incredible opportunity to reach more customers by opening their business to new channels.”
The report revealed that 80 percent make online buys at least once per month while 30 percent said they make online purchases at least once during the week. The poll found that 48 percent of shoppers “have bought or spent more than planned when shopping online.”
“One in two (48 percent) online customer journeys begin at e-commerce marketplaces such as eBay or Amazon,” the authors said in the report. “In the last year, online shoppers have spent the most with e-commerce marketplaces ($488), closely followed by major online/offline brands ($409) such as Nordstrom or Best Buy.”
The survey also showed that online shopping is favored by Millennials who spend half of their shopping budget online. The report also showed that 67 percent of millennials and 56 percent of Generation X “prefer to search and purchase on e-commerce sites rather than in-store” while 41 percent of Baby Boomers and 28 percent of seniors “prefer online to offline shopping.”
In regards to when and where they shop, the researchers found that 43 percent of online shoppers “have made a purchase while in bed” while 25 percent “have made an online purchase from a bricks-and-mortar store.” And one-in-ten “shoppers admitted to buying something online after drinking alcohol.”