Online Consumers Favor Offline Purchases, Research Firm Finds
Online consumers in the United States by 2005 will spend more than $632 billion in offline channels after researching products and services on the Internet -- more than three times higher than the $199 billion they will spend online after conducting the same activity on the Internet, according to Jupiter Communications.Web-influenced spending, which includes both offline and online purchases, will cross $235 billion this year alone, the New York market researcher said in a report released yesterday.
Such projections reflect the critical importance of U.S. online consumers to retailers. Jupiter said U.S. online consumers in 2005 will account for 75 percent of all expected retail spending offline and online, up from 43 percent estimated for last year.
