AC Nielsen conducted an on-line survey involving about 22,000 Internet users from 42 markets around the globe, 74% of whom admitted that shopping was a hobby to them, and they would like to go shopping even when they had nothing to buy. That is to say that many people today choose window-shopping to kill time. Ninety percent of the responders from Singapore even said that was what they went shopping for. One third of shoppers on Chinese Mainland and one fifth of the Indians picked buying clothes as their favorite pastime.

The survey, which also covered the question how often the responders went shopping, found that 7 Asian markets were on the top-10 list. The top-3 were Singapore, Hong Kong and Thailand, where people went shopping twice a week on average.

However, people from the Western countries are not so fond of shopping as Asians. Only 68% of Americans said they would like to go window-shopping, while most Europeans hated window-shopping.

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