Where do home and small business users buy their computers?

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Clarification of Question by bvd_google-ga on 09 Aug 2002 21:06 PDT

I am looking for verifiable or referencable information that provides
a segmentation of revenues or spending.  For example, 20% buy their
computers from retailers such as Staples, 50% from on line etailers,
etc.

Hi,

Sometimes finding reliable statistics on the internet is a bit tricky.

I do believe I found some reliable statistics for your question from
the Commerce and Census Departments.

The first set of statistics comes from the table "Unadjusted and
Adjusted Estimates of Monthly Retail and Food Services Sales by Kinds
of Business:`2002"
http://www.census.gov/mrts/www/data/html/nsal02.html

Category# 44312 Computer and software stores (Jan)2,260 (Feb)2,068
(March)2,293 (April)1,965 (May) 2,075 10,661 10,146

(Estimates are show in millions of dollars)and it deals with both
e-commerce and brick and morter sales.

The second set of statistics comes from the Census Department's
"MEASURING THE ELECTRONIC ECONOMY" site.
http://www.census.gov/eos/www/ebusiness614.htm

Their March 2002 release provides the latest statistics on the % of
total shipments for computer and electronic products.
334 Computer and electronic products - % of total shipments (2000)15.2
(1999)14.0

Here's the PDF link for the tables.
http://www.census.gov/eos/www/papers/estatstables.pdf

Please note: The two sets of statistics are not comparable as one
deals with 2002 and the other deals with 2000 and 1999. Combined,
however, they do provide some interesting insights into the computer
market.

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For additional comparative purposes, according to INTERNETWEEK/
28-Aug-00, page 19,

Percent of sales made online, for computer products was 26%. Computer
Products

I'm not sure you'll be able to read this spreadsheet because I had to
log in to get it.
http://www.infotechtrends.com/cgi-bin/cif/sub_read.pl?ux=00&quar=00Q3&00333098.htm=on

So, it seems that there's anywhere from 15%-25% of computer products
purchased online.

Search Strategy:
e-commerce, computers
computer sales statistics
e-commerce statistics

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Request for Answer Clarification by bvd_google-ga on 12 Aug 2002 18:59 PDT

Thanks.  Did you find anything that segments the data by point of sale
(POS)?  I am particularly intersted in data that shows revenue
segmentation of the 513bn spent in 2000 as shown on the the e-stats
table.  How much of this was sold by stores such as Staples, Office
Max, Best Buy, CompUSA etc.

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Clarification of Answer by pm3500-ga on 12 Aug 2002 19:17 PDT

My apologies, but that seems to be a completely different question
than the one you asked. I do believe that you would need to post it as
a supplemental question.

Again, my apologies for the above clarification. When I reread it, it
seems a bit short. Since your question focused on an ecommerce vs
brick and mortor  segmentation I did not go further. The government
e-commerce data only segments sales according to industry.

My initial inquiry/clarification used an example for clarity -- I
agree your point that a more explicit question will require another
inquiry.  But such is the iterative nature of research.  No problem,
but what I am really after is a segmentation of the revenues -- you
see I don't think brick and mortar companies are really doing $513bn
in sales to small businesses and consumers.  I could be wrong but that
number seems high.  Ideally, I would love to know what the share of
the revenues are for companies like Staples, Office max, Best Buy,
etc.

Maybe you could offer a better way to phrase my question.  I will then
consider another inquiry.