Online spending, it's access that counts
Tuesday September 07 09:50 AM EDT
dailynews.yahoo.com
Margaret Kane, ZDNet
A new study of electronic commerce finds that the biggest shopping expense for online consumers is just the act of getting online.
The NextCard eCommerce Index, which uses consumers actual purchase data to determine the most popular e-commerce sites, found that for the past three out of four months, online access companies made up at least three of the top e-commerce sites.
The NextCard study uses the data from its 100,000 cardholders to determine the number of transactions performed at e-commerce sites, not the amount of the transactions. That helps the company compare results across categories, so they aren't influenced by one or two extremely expensive purchases at a specific site.
"We were surprised when we first did (the index) of the strong positions that ISPs still have. It's a great watermark because it's only one transaction a month," said Jamie Hale, manager of new product development, at NextCard.
America Online Inc. (NYSE: AOL) topped out the August data, holding on the number one spot it grabbed from Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) in July.
Other ISPs in the top ten were Earthlink Networks Inc. (Nasdaq:ELNK came in fourth and the MSN network (Nasdaq: MSFT) came in tenth.
Hale said the recent spurt in promotion from ISPs, with many companies offering rebates of $400 as part of bundling deals with PC companies and retail stores, has probably driven a lot of the growth.
So once consumers have paid for access, where are they spending their money? Hale said that Amazon.com, which has held either the number one or number two spot since the company began tracking the data in May, clearly dominates e-commerce.
While next card doesn't release actual numbers, he said Amazon "dominates the list."
In fact, the top five retailers are responsible for the majority of the transactions, although "no one has much more than 10 or 12 percent of the online pie."
One thing the company has noticed is that they can clearly see the results of promotions and advertising, as evidenced in part by the ISP promotions. But the ISPs aren't the only ones who have benefited.
Drugstore.com, for instance, jumped 57 spots in June after the company went public and ran a major advertising campaign.
"Promotions really drive transactions," Hale said. |
