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Online sales grow
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December 21, 2000: 1:07 p.m. ET
More shoppers, more market share for online retailers this year, but enough?
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Online retail sales are likely to grow 70 to 80 percent this holiday season, market researchers said Thursday, a significant expansion but perhaps not enough to rescue troubled e-commerce Web sites.
More U.S. consumers have access to the Internet this holiday -- 60 percent, compared to 53 percent in 1999 -- and a larger share of users plan to shop online -- 48 percent, up from 37 percent -- according to a survey of customers by the Boston Consulting Group research firm and online pollster Harris Interactive.
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 HOLIDAY SPENDING ONLINE
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Household gift spending on the Internet this holiday will average $234, up from $170 last year, according to the Boston Consulting Group-Harris Interactive survey. The breakdown:
$50 or less - 25%
$51-100 - 16%
$101-250 - 29%
$250-500 - 21%
$501-1,000 - 8%
$1,001 or more - 1%
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Online consumers also are spending more. The average household purchase over the Net this season is $234, up from $170 last year, the survey found, based on results through Dec. 11, and those shoppers plan to do 29 percent of their holiday shopping online, up from 25 percent in 1999.
This survey of 1,930 Internet users did not attempt to gauge the outlook for the troubled e-commerce sector. Analysts have said this will be a "do or die" season for many online merchants. As many as 10 of the 22 publicly traded e-commerce companies followed by Goldman Sachs may no longer be alive by mid-2001, analyst Anthony Noto has said, though he declined to guess which ones will die.
Shoppers' satisfaction improves
Purchasers also pronounced themselves happier with the online shopping experience -- only 3 percent said they were "dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" -- even though 21 percent had some kind of failure, most typically an incomplete order or late delivery, the survey found.
Incomplete orders were the problem for 8 percent of customers, while 2 percent reported incorrect orders or damaged goods. Customers also had a variety of other problems, including sites that were slow or transaction engines that didn't work.
Although that 21 percent failure rate is an improvement from the 50-plus percent who reported problems last year, that's still not good enough.
"The consumer experience remains uneven and the market is not yet working for many of the pure plays out there," said Peter Stanger, a vice president of Boston Consulting Group. "It's too high a number to bring the consumer back to the same site."
This study did not compare pure-play online retailers to multi-channel "bricks and clicks" merchants. Stanger said a follow-up report early next year would address that issue. 
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