FIGURE 10.1
growth in e-commerce did not appear to be slowing as of 2004. In her commentary "Good News for E-tailers from Tomorrow's Retired Investors" (Gallup Organization, December 14, 2004), Raksha Arora pointed to the fact that e-commerce brought in $17.6 billion in the third fiscal quarter of 2004, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. This number represented a 21.5% increase over e-commerce sales in the third quarter of 2003. Arora reasons that as the large American generation born in the post–World War II era become retirees this trend will only likely continue.
The growth in overall e-commerce has been reflected in the growth in online holiday shopping. An early December 2004 Gallup poll revealed that three in ten planned to use the Internet to shop for holiday gifts in 2004. Mark Gillespie reported in "Average American Will Spend $797 on Gifts This Holiday Season" (Gallup Organization, November 27, 2000) that 21% of people surveyed said they were at least somewhat likely to do their holiday shopping online. This figure represented a dramatic increase from 1998 when only 10% said they would go online to buy gifts.
Some differences existed between those who shopped online and those who did not. According to "Online Shopping Grows, but Department, Discount Stores Still Most Popular with Holiday Shoppers" by Mark Gillespie (Gallup Organization, December 3, 2002), men were more likely than women to do holiday shopping online. Age also seemed to make a difference. Roughly one out of ten (13%) of those eighteen to twenty-nine interviewed said they were very likely to shop online, compared to two-tenths (22%) of those between the ages of thirty and forty-nine. Only 9% of Americans over fifty said they were likely to shop online.
Banking
By the early 2000s more and more banks were offering electronic banking options that allowed customers to conduct banking business without ever walking up to a teller. (See Chapter 3.) According to "Banking Customers Still Love Bricks and Mortar" by Dennis Jacobe (Gallup Organization, June 10, 2003), Americans were taking advantage of these electronic services. In a March 2000 Gallup poll, only 7% of Americans reported any experience with online banking. By 2003 29% of Americans said that they banked online from home at least once a month, and 17% responded they banked online more than four times a month. (See Figure 10.2.) ATM usage also increased between 2000 and 2003, but at a lower rate. Forty-eight percent of Americans used an ATM at least once a month in 2000, compared with 57% in 2003.
Due to the high costs of hiring tellers and leasing branch space, banks have encouraged the use of electronic banking among customers as a whole. While Americans have taken advantage of online banking, debit cards, and ATM services, most still make regular trips to a bank branch location. Jacobe's Gallup report revealed that in 2003 83% of Americans still visited their bank once a month on average, and three out of ten visited the bank four or five times a month. In the March 2000 Gallup poll, 87% of respondents said they were bank customers, and 78% said they used the bank once a week. Between 2000 and 2003, the frequency of visits appeared to have gone down, but the number of banking customers did not change. Overall, Jacobe concluded that seeing a teller face to face was still very important to Americans. In particular, when faced with a complicated transaction, people would rather deal with someone in person. Consumers were also willing to pay the additional fees for the added convenience of ATM and online banking where applicable.
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