Survey: Women Hesitant to Buy Jewelry Online

-- JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone, 5/16/2007 12:36:00 PM

A total of 96% of American women who have shopped online in the past 12 months have purchased at least one product over the Web, according to a poll. Most online shoppers (57%) do both their product research and shopping online while a sizeable proportion do their research online and then go to a store to buy (31%).

"But, despite the fact that women seem to be so comfortable with online shopping, ShopSmart's poll results show that there are still a lot of 'gotchas' out there," said Lisa Lee Freeman, editor-in-chief of ShopSmart, a new magazine by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, which conducted the survey.

Among the findings of the The ShopSmart Online Shopping Poll:

* Seventeen percent of women surveyed say they would never consider buying food on the Web followed by clothing (14%), shoes (8%), and jewelry (7%).

* Women spend an average of 1.2 hours per week shopping online.

* More than half of the time devoted to shopping for non-grocery items in a typical week is online.

* A total of 18 percent of working women admit they do most of their online shopping during work hours. But, most online shopping is usually done between the hours of 5 p.m. and midnight (54%).

* Time spent shopping online is about shopping for themselves (51%), whereas time spent shopping in stores is more often focused on family members or others (56%).

* One-third of women who have shopped online in the past year said they had a negative experience. Among those women, 20 percent said they never got the item they ordered. Another 13% said the merchandise was very different than represented.

* More than 450,000 American women claimed to have had their credit card number stolen online during the past 12 months.

* On average the most ever spent for an item online was $397 and 15 percent have spent $1,000 or more.

*In the past 12 months, more than one-quarter of women shopping online have spent more than $1,000, and 9 percent have spend $2,500 or more.