POLL: Online Holiday Shopping: A Boom in the Gloom?

Nov. 23, 2007 — -- Even as economic discontent casts a pall on the holiday shopping season, there may be a bright spot in one area of the retailing world: online. More than a third of Americans now say they'll buy holiday gifts over the Internet, a new high in ABC News polling.

Use of the Internet for holiday shopping grew sharply earlier this decade -- from just 18 percent in 1999 to 31 percent in 2003 -- but then flattened. This year it's broken out of that range; 36 percent of Americans say they'll buy holiday gifts online.

And that 36 percent figure is higher, naturally, once you exclude the offline population; among Internet users nearly half, 47 percent, say they'll buy online.

Friday is "Black Friday," the traditional kickoff to the holiday shopping season in which many retailers do a major proportion of their annual business.

People who plan to holiday shop online are predominantly younger and wealthier, two groups that are more likely to use the Internet in the first place. Among those under 35, 46 percent plan to shop online, compared with only 10 percent of those over 65.

But the biggest difference is by income: Among people with household incomes over $100,000, 70 percent plan to shop online, compared with only 17 percent of those with incomes under $25,000. Better-educated people, city dwellers and married people -- factors associated with being online -- also are more apt to use it for shopping.

SPEND -- How much they'll spend is another question. Among all Americans, 36 percent plan to spend less on holiday gifts this year, while just 14 percent plan to spend more. Those figures are essentially identical whether they plan to buy online or not.

It's not clear how those spending expectations will play out; in most years anticipated holiday spending plans do not appear to have correlated closely with actual spending. That may be because people really don't know what they'll spend until they get out to the stores --