Stat Source Date Excluding travel, online retail sales in the U.S. grew 34% in 2003 over the previous year, reaching $72 billion, with a rising economic tide “floating all boats,” meaning that all product categories online did well. Shop.org/Forrester Research State of Retailing Online Survey 05/2004 Overall, online sales accounted for 5.4% of total retail sales in 2003, up from 3.6% in 2002. In 2004, online sales are projected to account for 6.6% of total retail sales. One of the most significant changes from 2002 is that in the aggregate, all retailer types recorded operating profitably in 2003. A total of 79% of retailers posted positive operating margins for their online businesses last year, with retailers in the aggregate reporting operating margins of 21%. Shop.org/Forrester Research State of Retailing Online Survey 05/2004 Web-based retailers showed the greatest improvement in operating margins over last year, turning a loss of 16% in 2002 to a gain of 15% in 2003. Store-based retailers improved profitability, reporting average operating margins of 7% in 2002 to 21% in 2003. With average operating margins of 28%, catalog-based retailers were retail’s most profitable group in 2003. Shop.org/Forrester Research State of Retailing Online Survey 05/2004 Online retail sales continued their robust year-over-year growth in the first quarter, increasing 28.1% to $15.5 billion from Q1 2003 sales of $12.1 billion. As has been the case since the Commerce Department started tracking e-commerce sales in Q4 1999, first quarter online sales were exceeded only by the preceding fourth quarter sales. Year-over-year growth has never fallen below 21% except for the third and fourth quarters of 2001 when the rates were 11.6% and 17.6%, respectively. Census Bureau, U.S. Commerce Dept. 05/04 Dialing up is on the downswing, as 55 percent of all adult Internet users have high-speed access either at home or work, and 39 percent of adult surfers have a broadband connection at home. Pew Internet & American Life Project 04/2004 An estimated 204.3 million people, or 74.9 percent of the population above the age of two and living in households equipped with a fixed-line phone, had Internet access, up from 66 percent in February 2003. Nielsen/NetRatings 03/2004 Internet penetration for women aged 35 to 54 was 81.7 percent, compared with 80.2 percent for men in the same age group. For the 25 to 34 age group, Internet usage was 77 percent for women and 75.6 percent for men. Nielsen/NetRatings 03/2004 Multi-channel shoppers are bigger spenders. Consumers who shopped in three channels spent $1,000 on average this holiday shopping season. 35% of multi-channel shoppers report spending 33% more than single-channel shoppers DoubleClick 02/2004 Multi-channel shoppers now represent 65% of all consumers vs. 56% a year earlier. 36% of all shoppers shopped in retail stores and on the Internet, and 24% shopped in retail stores, on the Internet and from catalogs. DoubleClick 02/2004 Growth in online retail will be due in part to new online buyers, not just veterans, who have come to embrace the medium. Jupiter expects that the online buying population will grow by 14 percent in 2004, representing 30 percent of the U.S. population. By 2008, one-half of the population will make purchases online. Jupiter Research 01/2004 U.S. online retail sales are expected to reach $65 billion in 2004, and will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent through 2008 to top $117 billion. Jupiter Research 01/2004 Q4 2003 online retail sales in the US totaled $17.21 billion, rising 30% over the fourth quarter of 2002 when $13.28 billion was generated online. comScore 01/20/2004 U.S. online advertising spending is expected to account for $8.1 billion of the country's $293 billion total media budget by 2006, marking a return to 2000's Internet spending spree figures. eMarketer 07/14/2003 57 percent of U.S. Internet users incorrectly believe that when a Web site has a privacy policy, it will not share their personal information with other sites or companies. Annenberg Center 06/26/2003 Retail sales over the Internet grew by 25.9 percent in the first quarter of 2003 compared to the same quarter a year earlier, rising to $11.9 billion.  The gain was the smallest year-over-year increase since the 23.5 percent gain in the second quarter of 2002. U.S. Dept. of Commerce 05/23/2003 U.S. retail sales on the Internet are expected to climb by 26 percent to about $96 billion this year. online retail sales jumped 48 percent to $76 billion last year. The sum was about 3.6 percent of total U.S. retail sales. For 2003, online sales are expected to account for 4.5 percent of total U.S. retail sales. Shop.org/Forrester 05/15/2003 When asked if their online buying is likely to increase, 71.2 percent of the 2002 respondents answered affirmatively, compared to 66.1 percent in 2001, and 54.5 percent in 2000. 2002 UCLA Internet Report 04/24/2003 2003 online retail sales will reach $51.7 billion, led by 97 million consumers -- 59 percent of the online population. 142 million consumers or 65 percent of the online population will have made a purchase online by 2007). Online retail spending is expected to reach $105 billion by 2007, accounting for 5 percent of all U.S. retail spending and influencing 34 percent of all U.S. retail spending. Jupiter Research 04/24/2003 2003 will bring in $58.2 billion in business-to-consumer (B2C) retail revenue. eMarketer 04/24/2003 View-through rates — based on users taking an action within 30 days of seeing an ad — rose 47 percent during the year, from .36 percent in the first quarter to .53 percent in the fourth quarter. Rich media led the way, recording click-through rates of 2.5 percent in the fourth quarter. Click-through rates for non-rich-media ads actually declined from .4 percent in the first quarter to .3 percent in the fourth. DoubleClick 01/29/2003 Rich media sustained its march into the mainstream, with use growing 43 percent over the year. In the fourth quarter, rich-media ads accounted for 25 percent of all ads served by DoubleClick. This trend will continue, with rich-media ads growing another 10 percent in the first quarter of 2003. DoubleClick 01/29/2003 Home broadband Internet access increased 59 percent in 2002 while dial-up access declined 10 percent. In December, 33.6 million people accessed the Internet at home via broadband, while 74.4 million accessed through dial-up connections. Nielsen//NetRatings 01/15/2003 E-mail (78 percent), free shipping with conditions (62 percent) and search engine placement (37 percent) were the top three most successful marketing/promotion efforts for online merchants during the holidays. Shop.org and BizRate.com 2002 Online Holiday Mood Study 01/13/2003 More than 35.5 million U.S. Internet users made shopping trips to virtual department store sites during the week ending November 3, 2002 — that's a 20 percent increase from the week ending October 20 and roughly 14 million more than almost the same time period in 2001. Nielsen/NetRatings 11/28/2002 More Americans are going online — 61 percent according to the current measurements as opposed to 59 percent at the end of 2001 — with more also surfing the Internet daily (35.3 percent versus 33.7 percent), yet fewer Internet users express overall trust, which declined from 26.7 percent at the end of 2001 to 25.5 percent in the current survey. However, satisfaction showed a one-point increase (40.1 percent to 41.1 percent). NFO Worldgroup 10/16/2002 Individuals with household incomes ranging from $100,000 to $150,000 are the fastest growing income group online, which represents nearly 15 million Web surfers. The income group represents the most growth in people using the Web, up about 20 percent compared to a tally last year. The income bracket now represents about 12 percent of the Web population. Nielsen//NetRatings 10/15/2002 Families with household incomes in the $150,000-and-up bracket were the next-fastest growth group on the Web, coming in at over 14 percent higher than the year before. In third place were households with incomes between $75,000 and $100,000, which grew by 12 percent to represent about 21 million people, or about 17 percent of the Web population. Nielsen//NetRatings 10/15/2002 47 percent of the 45.1 million wired U.S. adults that have a television and a computer in the same room frequently surf the Net and the channels simultaneously. ComScore Networks 09/17/2002 Twenty-nine percent said they occasionally used the Internet and watched TV at the same time; 18 percent rarely surfed simultaneously; and only 5 percent reported never doing so. ComScore Networks 09/17/2002 10 million Americans surf from cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Of the 19.1 million users owning a PDA, 5 million access the Internet with those devices, and among the 67.2 million online users that own a cell phone, 5.8 million access the Internet with those devices. ComScore Networks 09/06/2002 36 percent of American Internet users say that will leave a website if the website has too many ads on it. eMarketer 08/26/2002 Nearly 60 percent of American Internet users say that that if a webpage is cluttered with ads they would have a less-favorable opinion about the products or services advertised on the site. eMarketer 08/26/2002 Home surfers spent 3 hours, 11 minutes online (a 0.4% climb from one week earlier) and 'net users on the job spent 6 hours, 7 minutes online (leaping 12.7%). Nielsen//NetRatings 06/21/2001 Search engines, portals and online communities make up the most popular category in terms of traffic among US Internet users, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. 95 million people visited such sites in May 2001, representing a reach of 92% of the country's online audience. Nielsen//NetRatings 06/12/2001 Nearly half of non-users of the Internet (48%) are interested in going online for at least one specific Internet activity, indicating significant potential growth for e-commerce. Continental Research 06/05/2001 About 43% of US adults aged 55 to 64 used the Internet as of April 2001, up from 36% six months earlier. United Business Media's Mediamark Research's semi-annual "Cyber Stats" report 05/25/2001 Overall web usage grew 19% from April 2000. The greatest percentage gain came in the 55-and-over demographic, which was up 33% for the year, while the number of 18- to 24-year olds online was up 32%. Even with those gains, though, 25- to 34-year-olds remain the largest age group online. Jupiter Media Metrix 05/16/2001 The number of online household subscriptions dropped 0.29% during the first quarter of 2001 to 68.5 million. Survey by Telecommunications Reports International (TRI) 05/09/2001 Cities in the Pacific Northwest region of the US have the highest internet penetration levels -- close to 70% of households in the area have personal computers with internet access. Nielsen//NetRatings 04/11/2001 Portland has the highest internet penetration level with 69.7% of households online. Seattle follows with 69.6% and San Francisco comes in third with 69.1%. Nielsen//NetRatings 04/11/2001 In Philadelphia, the number of wired households grew by 40%, in Detroit the level grew by 38% and in New York, internet penetration grew by 34%."/ Nielsen//NetRatings 04/06/2001 The number of people in the US with internet access rose from 88 million in the first half of 2000 to 104 million by the second half. Source will be place here 04/06/2001 135 million Americans went online in 2000, more than half every day, putting the U.S. at the top of the total online population heap. The Pew Internet American Life Project 02/21/2001 Internet penetration has reached 60 percent in the U.S., with more than 168 million people having Web access from either the home or the workplace in January. Nielsen/NetRatings 02/14/2001 At-work Internet penetration accounted for 14 percent of all Web access or 41 million office workers, while home Internet access comprised 58 percent or 162 million surfers. Nielsen/NetRatings 02/14/2001 More than 10 percent of online urban consumers live in households with a $75,000 annual income. Further, the urban online population is growing at 17.3 percent a year. Of the 45.3 million urban consumers, 22.5 million are currently online. Urban IQ 01/22/2001 Of the 188 million adults living in the United States, approximately half – or 94 million – do not use the Internet, nearly 57 percent of these nonsurfers have no interest in ever going online. Pew Internet American Life Project 10/1/2000 80 percent of people in households earning more than $75,000 have Net access, but just 31 percent of those in homes that earn less than $30,000 have access. Pew Internet American Life Project 10/1/2000

Source: shop.org