Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

Research by Forrester Benchmark 2007: Retail, reveals that the growth of online shopping is still being driven by early adopters, says Research Recap.

With 57 percent of online adults purchasing items on the internet over the last three months, it gives the perception online shopping has gone mainstream.

For North America, 36 percent of the population are early adopters, which accounts for 53 percent of online shopping. The most purchased items are music, tickets for events and books.

Early adopters tend to interact in offline and online stores, with convenience being the key driver of their decision making.

Here are the three types of consumers identified in the study:

Early Adopters which, despite the price constraints of new technology, are willing to try them before any other segment of the population is willing. This constitutes 36 percent of the population.

Mainstream Consumers, who wait until a technology's benefits are proven, or at least until the price is lowered, before purchasing. 43 percent of North American adults belong to this category.

Sidelined Citizens, the last of their peers to adopt a new technology. This group is made up of 21 percent of North American adults. For them, price is always an issue, even after a technology has proven its value.

This is encouraging to me, as it shows the tremendous upside to online marketing for some time to come. 

It does show that there will probably be some price pressures on margins as marketers move beyond early adopters into the mainstream population. It looks like that will be a real gradual process, and so won't have a lot of impact over short periods of time.