International Marketing Review 14,5 376

International online marketing of foods to US consumers
Gregory K. White
Department of Resource Economics and Policy, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, USA
Introduction Internet shopping is beginning to show signs that it may live up to its early revolutionary projections. It is now estimated that 23 per cent of US and Canadian residents over the age of 16 use the Internet, and as of March 1997, 17 per cent of this population had used the World Wide Web (WWW) in the previous month. (CommerceNet, 1997) Nearly three quarters of these Web users have searched the Internet for information about products and services, and 15 per cent have made an online purchase. Thousands of firms marketing food and beverages worldwide are among those trying to attract the attention, and buying power, of these Internet shoppers. It is now possible to purchase specialty Italian cheeses direct from a cybershop in Italy or New York. Consumers interested in smoked fish can pay a virtual visit to companies in Alaska or Iceland from their home computers. Internet users are an attractive target group for specialty food and drink producers. Like the overall Internet population, people who visit food and drink sites online are relatively young (median age of 37), wealthier than most (median income of $58,000), and well educated (91 per cent have attended some college and 75 per cent have at least a four-year degree) (White and Cheng, 1996). They also mirror those consumers who purchase specialty food and drink products through traditional markets (Dietrich, 1992). The Internet population is also international, although more than 80 per cent of Internet users are estimated to reside in the USA (Pitkow and Kehoe, 1996a). This means that any business with a presence on the Internet automatically becomes a multinational company (Quelch and Klein, 1996).