Europe's Net-shoppers closing gap
 |
Video game players are expected to be hot items on gift lists.
Story Tools
YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS
|
Follow the news that matters to you. Create your own alert to be notified on topics you're interested in.
Or, visit Popular Alerts for suggestions.
|
|
LONDON (Reuters) -- European Web shoppers will ring up 9 billion euros ($10.5 billion) in e-commerce purchases for the 2003 Christmas period, a new forecast says.
That will close the gap on the home of "e-shopaholics," the United States, where Christmas shopping via the Internet will likely hit $12 billion this year.
With this year's must-have gifts decidedly on the techy side -- from DVD players to digital cameras and video game consoles -- more of Europe's shoppers than ever are expected to flock to the Internet to browse and buy.
"Europe is hot on the heels of the U.S. this Christmas season," said Forrester Research analyst Hellen Omwando, who estimated that there are 166 million online shoppers in Europe.
She said shoppers in Western Europe are expected to purchase 9 billion euros worth of goods between November 1 and Christmas day, up 18 percent from last year's Forrester Christmas forecast.
Analysts have predicted that Europe could surpass the U.S. as the world's largest online retail market by the end of the decade as credit card penetration and trust in the medium grow.
The projection is a rare bit of good news for a sector that had been decimated by the bursting of the dot-com bubble. Countless Internet firms sprung to life in the late 1990s, selling everything from dog food to jewellery, only to run out of money after their first Christmas.
The big online players today are recognisable high street retailers such as UK grocery chain Tesco, Fnac.com, the online arm of Pinault Printemps Redoute, plus dot-com survivors Amazon.com and eBay.
The Forrester forecast counted sales projections for 17 Western European countries -- the 15 EU member states plus Finland and Switzerland.
According to Forrester, the UK and Germany will account for 63 percent of European holiday sales. The largest product categories will be travel bookings, books and groceries, Omwando said.
"It's pointing to a very big year, simply because people started shopping as early as October," said Dorothea Arndt, marketing director for the British arm of Kelkoo.com, the Web-based price comparison shopping service.
She said the top gift search requests are for electronic gadgets such as Apple Computer iPod digital music player, the Sony PlayStation 2 video game console and Nike trainers.
But the rise of online shopping also has a dark side. British shoppers, alone, are expected to lose £300,000 ($504,800) every day to "card not present" fraud, in which fraudsters intercept credit card details during an online or telephone purchase, the Association of Payment Clearing Services warned.
"This is where we expect fraud to migrate to," said Carl Clump, chief executive of online fraud prevention firm Retail Decisions.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
