IP: Conclusion of a Working Paper on 1995 Baseline Internet

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

I have abstracted the Conclusion from the paper for those with limited Web
access and/or time. djf




"At this stage in the development of the Internet as a commercial medium,
individuals and firms must cooperate and share information in order to move
the market forward (Hoffman and Novak 1994; Hoffman and Novak 1996b). We are
at a critical juncture in the development of electronic commerce. At
present, we lack much solid data and information on which to base business,
investment, and regulatory decisions. In the absence of such information,
development will be dictated largely by confusion, fear, and a "gold-rush"
mentality.


The Internet, as measured in hosts, servers and documents, is growing
exponentially (for example, see the summary in Hoffman 1996b). The estimates
presented in this paper can provide a baseline from which to measure the
growth and characteristics of the people using this medium and contribute to
our knowledge of its evolution over
time.


Keeping in mind the limitations inherent in our definitions of Internet and
Web access and use, we propose 1995 baseline estimates of 28.8 million
people 16 years and over who have potential or actual access to the Internet
in the United States; 16.4 million people 16 years and over who have used
the Internet in the past three months; 11.5 million people 16 and over who
have used the World Wide Web in the past three months, and 1.51 million
people 16 and over who have used the Web to purchase something.


At present, we cannot compare our estimates to those released by O'Reilly or
FIND/SVP because we lack the specific methodological details that would
facilitate such comparison. These details include the exact definitions of
the use measures, a description of the sampling methodology and weighting
scheme, and the demographic distributions of the weighted samples. Times
Mirror has provided us with their survey instrument and raw data and we plan
to report on these and other Internet surveys in a subsequent paper (Gupta,
Hoffman, and Novak 1996).


The preliminary results we have presented here concerning Internet use among
people 16 and over in the United States represent one step toward creating the
fundamental research that is necessary to develop the market effectively and
productively. In the emerging commercial market, many more such efforts are
necessary, including the development and evaluation of Web measurement
standards, "best" business practices, further survey research, and models
for measuring consumer demand in a revolutionary new medium. Achieving
critical mass of the Internet as a commercial medium, at both the firm and
consumer levels, depends on such research."