Joi Ito has an early look at an AC Nielson study on online shopping around the world - and demonstrates that it differs around the world:

The US is way behind Europe in the amount of online shopping (ranking 11 worldwide), perhaps because mall shopping is so much easier than shopping in a European city. This encourages Europeans to shop online.

I've been surprised by how hard it is to buy things in Europe after 5 pm, that's for sure. Everything closes early - it's not at all like the US, where I expect to be able to get milk (or anything else) at midnight or later. I guess this study shows that it has an impact on how people shop online.

Anyway, interesting stuff.