She noted that the Philippines is comparable to Thailand in terms of online shopping behavior, while Korea and Australia have the highest online transaction adoption in Asia-Pacific.

As shown in the ACNielsen survey 'The online consumer and e-commerce in the Philippines,' conducted during the second half of 2004, a growing portion of the country's regular Internet users are online shoppers.

With a total adult population of about 55 million, the Philippines has around 3.5 million Internet users. About 2.4 million access the Internet occasionally, leaving the total number of regular Internet users to a mere 1.1 million.

'The youth market segment makes up 29 percent of the total number of regular Internet users in the country,' Van Tooren notes. Van Tooren added that there were 209,000 online shoppers by the end of 2004. The figure is growing at around 6 percent annually along with a steady growth in online spending among Filipino consumers.

Local online shops expect sales to peak this Christmas season, majority have already prepared for the run.