December 19, 2004
The whys and wherefores on online shopping
UK tracks US in online shopping: "UK online spending is set to double this Christmas - matching US habits - thanks to higher take-up of high-speed internet services, a survey has said"
WRONG.
We know, as there is plenty of empirical evidence to back it up, that
- the longer you have been on-line, the more likely you are to be comfortable with the net and therefore shop online
- that the longer you have been online the more probable it is that you have broadband
We also knew that #1 was true several years before we knew that #2 was true, and that there is no evidence that #2 invalidates #1.
But we also know that the BBC tends to re-write press releases as news stories, rather than thinking about them in any great depth, so we can surmise that, as usual, they have got it utterly wrong once again.
