Online shopping continues to boom: seven out of ten Internet users shop online
Seven out of ten Swiss internet users shop online, which amounts to 4.4 million people aged 14 and older. Fashion, clothing, and sporting goods are the most commonly purchased items online, but the most money is spent on travel and flights.
This is shown by the latest figures from the NET-Metrix-Base 2018-2 study on Internet usage in Switzerland, which publishes results on online shopping for the fourth time.
Fashion, clothing (incl. shoes) and sporting goods continue to top the list of online shopping: 2.7 million Swiss Internet users buy products in this category, an increase of 11 percent over three years. Purchases in the travel and flights categories as well as event tickets and coupon services round off the list with 2 million (+1 percent) and 1.8 million (+11 percent) online shoppers respectively.
However, Swiss Internet users spend the most in the categories of travel and flights, financial and insurance products, and furniture, furnishings and home improvement: 56 percent of people who booked a trip or flight online spent more than CHF 500 in a quarter. 35 percent of online buyers of financial and insurance products and 22 percent of online buyers of furniture, furnishings and home improvement also spent more than CHF 500 on the respective products in the same period.
Online commerce is successful among all generations of Internet users, but tends to decline with age: 83 percent of Internet users aged 30 to 39 shop online, compared with 54 percent of those over 60.
Online shopping is equally popular among women and men: 2.2 million users of each gender. However, if we take a closer look at the product categories, significantly more men than women buy products from the software, games and apps group online: 75 percent versus 25 percent. In the cosmetics and health product category, it's the other way around: with a ratio of 7:3, women are clearly overrepresented.
