Online shopping is more popular than ever

According to Nielsen Net View panel data, more than 2 million Swiss people used at least one of the leading e-commerce offerings in November 2011. According to the Net-Metrix Profile study, shopping on the Internet has increased sharply over the last three years. The proportion of weekly online purchases on the Internet has risen by more than 20 percent. This has benefited numerous providers who, according to Nielsen NetView, have been able to significantly expand their user numbers compared to the previous year - first and foremost Zalando, which was able to increase its user base 14-fold compared to November 2010. In addition to the fashion retailer, whose offering was visited at least once by around 230,000 Swiss Internet users in November, numerous other e-commerce retailers benefited from surfers' increased interest, including Digitech and Coop@home, for example, which also saw strong growth. However, the leader - as in the previous year - remains the online marketplace Ricardo, followed by the international players Amazon and Ebay.

An examination of the composition of the user base reveals that the large offers Ricardo and Amazon are used by a slightly above-average number of men, with a share of 54.2 percent and 53.5 percent respectively. Zalando, on the other hand, has 66.4 percent female users. In addition, the online fashion house seems to be particularly popular with younger users. The age group between 18 and 24 years is the most popular here with an affinity index of 190 (Composition Index according to Unique Audience, 100 = expected normal distribution on the Internet). are particularly well represented, while Amazon and Ricardo attract users between the ages of 25 and 49 in particular.

Across all offers, 61% of the Swiss now shop on the Internet. As the current study Net-Metrix-Profile 2011-2 shows, 21.5 percent of users even order goods online on a weekly basis or more frequently. Among male Internet users, the proportion of weekly online shoppers is significantly higher (24 percent) than among women (18 percent). From 2008 to the present, however, the proportion of female users who shop online at least once a week has increased more sharply (by 25 percent) than among men (by 16 percent). So women are slowly catching up in terms of online shopping. The largest proportion of online shoppers is also to be found among the 30 to 39 age group: Of users in this age group, 71 percent use online shopping occasionally and 27 percent even do so weekly. The greatest growth, however, is among young people and users over the age of 50. The biggest increases over the past three years have been among the following groups: Women, teens and those over 50. As in the trend from 2008 to 2011, Internet activities in the area of online shopping are expected to continue to increase in the future.