MORE PEOPLE PREFER TO BUY BIG TICKET ITEMS ON-LINE
People are willing to spend money on big purchases such as software and books on the Internet, research has found.
A National Retail Federation and Forrester Research Online Retail Index was released recently.
It showed that 'big ticket items' were software, music, health and beauty, food and beverage, books, clothes, consumer electronics and hotel reservations.
There had been an increase in the purchase of the items over the previous two months.
The number of Internet users will hit the 375 million mark by the end of 2000, according to a eTForecasts report. The United States will still be the leading Internet country in terms of the number of Internet users, although with an ever shrinking lead. The report also foresees China increasing its share to take second place. China is currently ranked fifth with 16 million users or four per cent of the worldwide total. The top Internet countries in consecutive order are the US (136 million), Japan (27 million), Germany (19 million), Britain (18 million), China (16 million), Canada (15 million), South Korea (15 million), Italy (12 million), Brazil (11 million) and France (nine million).
Internet users in Singapore are younger and spend less time on-line than their United States counterparts with males the dominant users, a study showed recently.
The study of nearly 2,000 Sin gaporeans found users visit about 22 different sites a month, com pared to 10 by US surf ers.
The results, pub lished in The Straits Times, also found 43 per cent are under 25 years old, compared to 28 per cent in the US, and they are more like ly to visit overseas sites.
Heavy metal band Metallica got tough re cently in its bid to stop fans from downloading music on the Internet.
Band members presented Internet site Napster with a list of the people who had used the site to copy Metallica music.
They demanded that Napster stand by its promise to bar the people who were illegally downloading the music.
The band has so far declined to say whether it would take legal action against any of the 335,000 people whose on-line names were contained in the 30 boxes of documents that drummer Lahrs Ulrich delivered to Napster.
