Almost fifty percent of young Germans (48%) aged between 16 and 24 shop online. In no other European country is online shopping so popular as with young Germans. In the list of most frequent online-shoppers Germans are followed by the Swedes (45%) and the Danes (41%). The EU average is 24 percent. Online shopping is least popular in the new EU member states from Eastern Europe. Young Germans particularly like music downloads. Almost half of all purchasers of digital music are younger than 30 years of age.
The above findings were revealed in the course of a survey conducted by the GfK market research institute and the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM). These findings, however, are not only interesting from a marketing expert´s point of view but also show a young generation which is not just making piracy copies as is often wrongly claimed by the music industry. On the contrary, the success of music downloads is to a large extent due to the demand on the part of young people, underlines BITKOM. The exact average age of purchaser of digital music is 31 years whereas it is 39 years as far as physical sound carriers are concerned.
In 2006 the digital music market hit an all-time record high. The number of music downloads increased to 26 million and turnover to 48 million Euros. Thus, the German market grew by one third as compared to 2005. Says Menno Harms, BITKOM vice president: „In 2007 turnover will probably reach 60 million Euros thereby surpassing the critical barrier of 50 million Euros for the first time. We forecast about 33 million downloaded singles and albums,and all this thanks in particular to our young customers.»
Online shopping in general is a little bit more popular with men aged between 16 and 24 than with women of the same age bracket. 54% shop on the internet, while only 42% of women do so. This trend is similar in many other countries. In the entire EU 27% of men and 21% of women did online shopping in 2006. 