Ray Van Eng (09/10/97)                 

IntelliQuest Information Group, Inc., said that its latest survey conducted during the second quarter of 1997 indicates that there are 51 million adults, age 16 and older, in the United States who are either online or on the Internet and that is an 46% increase over last year's figure.

The number of people cursing the information highway will continue to rise. An additional 8.5 million say they will be online by the end of this year pushing the count to 60 million souls before 1998.

The future of electronic commerce in the consumer sector looks promising also. 17% of all wired citizens (8.6 million in all) claimed to be online shoppers, spending an average of $50 a month for a estimated total expenditure of $5.1 billion annually.

The result is more than three times the level of what it was a year ago. In 1996, IntelliQuest found only 2.6 million people buying $1.6 billion of products and services via the virtual world.

62% of the purchasers are male doing 70% of the spending but the encouraging fact is that 54% of the people go to cyberspace for pre-purchase activities: finding information about products, scooping out the best prices and features, locating dealers etc.

Other interesting findings include:

-- Two out of three users access from home, but those getting wired at work is growing fast.

-- Currently, male to female online population ratio is 53% versus 47%, which is in distinct contrast with last year's figure with women at only 36%. In the next half a year or so, more women have expressed an interest to go online than men, so we should see an even more equal split among genders.

-- While only 20% of the people are considered as extremely active online (surfing for 10 hours or more per week), almost 40% of all users say they will be spending more time online in the near future. How do they find more time? By watching less television.

-- Curiously, given the popularity of the medium, user satisfaction level remains low. However, user experience is often tied to how happy they are with their service providers. The most common laments are slow access speed and unreliable connections.