WELLINGTON, July 1 (Xinhua) -- The number of New Zealanders shopping online rose by 6 percent last year, with more than a third of their spending going abroad, international research group Nielsen announced Tuesday.
More than 100,000 New Zealanders took to shopping online last year, bringing the total to 1.9 million people or 56 percent of the total online population, according to a Nielsen online retail report.
They spent 3.8 billion NZ dollars (3.32 billion U.S. dollars) shopping online and the figure was expected to reach 4.15 billion NZ dollars (3.63 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of this year, Nielsen research director Tony Boyte said in a statement.
"Kiwis have well and truly embraced internet shopping. The number of items each person is buying is increasing at a rapid rate. Nearly half a million Kiwis each made 11 or more purchases on the Internet last year, an increase of 58 percent in the last two years," said Boyte.
New Zealanders spent 1.3 billion NZ dollars (989.32 million U.S. dollars) on websites based overseas, with the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom being the most popular.
That figure was 34 percent of the total spent online, up from 26 percent the previous year and double that of 2010.
"A considerable proportion of spend will continue to go off- shore, but the opportunity remains for New Zealand retailers to take advantage of growth in the online retail space," said Boyte.
The most popular products and services were airline tickets ( with 44 percent shoppers buying online), followed by clothing, shoes and accessories (40 percent), books and magazines (35 percent), entertainment tickets (26 percent) and travel related services such as accommodation and car hire (25 percent).
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