Online Asians Lead in Income, E-commerce

While relatively low in numbers, the U.S. Asian population exhibits financial strength. Measured at just 4 percent of the Internet population, according to Jupiter Research (a unit of this site’s corporate parent), 42 percent of Asian Internet households earn $75,000 or more annually, compared to 35 percent of Caucasians and 26 percent of African-Americans. The Media Audit further revealed that while Hispanics outnumber Asians by more than double, the two groups nearly equal each other in the number of households that have annual incomes of $100,000 or more.

The Media Audit found in a survey of 86 major U.S. markets that roughly 56 percent of Asians have household incomes above $50,000, compared to some 50 percent of the general population. On the other end of the annual income spectrum, just over 10 percent of Asians are in households earning less than $25,000 per year, compared to 16 percent of the total population.

The high household income disparity among Asians and other ethnicities has exhibited itself in e-commerce. Nearly 31 percent of online Asians have made five or more Internet purchases in a year, and roughly 56 percent have made at least one purchase – overtaking the general Internet population and other online minorities, according to Bob Jordan, president of International Demographics, Inc., a 33-year-old market research firm that produces The Media Audit. “It [the data] shows that Asians as an ethnic group are making more purchases via the Internet than all of the other ethnic groups.”