There are significant differences between those who will shop for holiday gifts online and those who will buy in store, according to a National Retail Federation study conducted by BIGResearch. eMarketer looked at the study and came away with a few key points about online shoppers.

There is a 16.5-point difference between online buyers with annual incomes of $50,000 or more vs. those with annual incomes below $50,000. In no other channel is there as great a difference favoring the higher-income shoppers.

This difference is quite large compared to other shopping channels and eMarketer points out that the next most-affluent channel is at specialty stores (clothing, toys, electronics, etc.) where the difference between those below and above the $50k mark is 15.6 percent.

The report also answers where all these affluent web-shoppers are starting their research and it isn’t very surprising. Google is the starting point for about 1/4 of shoppers with Yahoo coming in second at only 7.4%. What is somewhat shocking is that only two shopping comparison sites, CNET and BizRate made the list of starting sites. Now that you know more about the overall demographics of online shoppers you just need to offer free shipping to get them to your site.