Before firms can sell their products online, they need to know what groups of people they find online and how these people behave in the online marketplace. In this section, we first look at consumer behavior in B2C, although many of the topics discussed in the field of B2B e-commerce also apply because the firm's decision to purchase is similar Consumer decision to buy.

We start our discussion by analyzing some basic demographic backgrounds of Internet users in the United States. The first principle of marketing and sales is: "Know the customer." Who uses the web? What does this person mean by using the web? And what does the web user mean? In 2012, about 239 million people from the general population and more than 89 million Americans (about 75% of all American families) had access to the Internet. (2) Compared to this, currently 98% of Americans TV And 94% have phones. Worldwide, 26.2 billion people use the Internet online.

Although the number of new online users grew at a rate of growth of 30% per year or more during the 2000s, the growth rate has dropped by about two to three percent per year over the past few years. Another electronic business does not have a double-digit growth rate among the online population that spends its money. The fastest growing days of the American online crowd are over.

The decline in the growth rate of the American online population has been somewhat offset by increasing the intensity and extent of using the Internet. Some research suggests that internet users spend more time on online use compared to previous years. Overall, the number of times users have been browsing the Internet has increased. 82% of the big American users (158 million people) use the Internet at least once a day. (3) In 2012, smartphones and tablets were the most important new means of accessing the Internet and online commerce. About 122 million people or about half of all Internet users in the United States have been connected to the Internet using mobile phones. In 2012, about 102 million internet users have come to entertainment and entertainment, 61 million have seen movies, 77 million have visited a social site, and millions of others have been listening to music or shopping. Or have used the text of web pages. (4) The more users spent more time on using the Internet, the easier it was to use a variety of Internet services, while users became more familiar with the types of services and tended to To discover more services.

People who are always online are involved in a wider range of activities than their past. Although email and search engines are the most important Internet services, other common activities include surfing social networks such as Facebook, researching the goods and services needed, accessing news, collecting entertainment information, watching Movies are streamed through movie sharing sites like YouTube and online banking. Table 2.1 lists the vast majority of online users of the Internet in the United States. Each percent represents about 1.9 million people in the year.