UK consumers are spending moretime on the web but not necessarily more
money, says broadband analyst Point
Topic.
According to a Point Topic survey, over 86% of internet users
now spend six hours or more
online a week when they are at home, up from 83% at the end of
2006, and 50% at the end of 2005.
And 5% of respondents claimed to spend more than 80 hours a week
surfing from home.
More users are also shopping online. In late 2006, just under
65% of respondents said they had purchased from an online store, by
June 2007 this had increased to 70%.
The overall weekly spend among online shoppers has dropped
however. This was matched with a percentage increase in user
spending at the lower end of the scale (£1-£20 per week).
"We believe this shift has a number of causes," said Katja
Mueller, an analyst at Point Topic. "One is that the fastest
growing groups of online users are now at the lower end of the
income scale, and this is reflected directly in the amounts being
spent online.
"Another is that people are increasingly using the internet to
buy smaller items," she said.