Lots of online news services have rushed to publish numbers purportedly showing that Australian online shoppers are "returning to the web in droves to peruse global e-commerce websites and make online purchases."
Trouble is, the numbers come from a June 18 press release issued by a US online marketing services provider - CoreMetrics. And they look decidedly dodgy.
For example, CoreMetrics claims that its numbers derive from a survey of "the buying habits of more than 75million shoppers world-wide."
But there is a very real question of whether there was any actual surveying done.
Instead it may well be that the numbers were extrapolated from the behaviour of online shoppers as monitored by cookies or similar tracking tools at CoreMetrics customer sites.
Certainly there are some very strange results being reported. One that caught my eye is the average order value numbers. These show the average online purchase for a Chinese online shopper is worth $US163, and for an Indian online shopper is $US91.
By comparison, CoreMetrics found the average order value for an Australian shopper at $US90.
Results like that suggest that something is very wrong with CoreMetrics data and should suggest extreme caution and even scepticism about any conclusions drawn from them.
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