How much do U.S. online shoppers buy from outside the United States? This is an important question for both U.S. and foreign online retailers.

eMarketer helps us answer the preceding question:

“More than three-fourths (77.0%) of U.S. Internet users were digital buyers in 2016, eMarketer estimates. But unlike in many other markets around the world, U.S. shoppers aren’t particularly likely to buy from foreign E-commerce sites — mostly because domestic sites are plentiful and competitively priced. These data points and hundreds of others come from a new eMarketer report examining cross-border shopping in 16 markets around the world.

“According to an October 2016 PayPal and Ipsos survey, roughly one-third (32%) of U.S. digital buyers had made a cross-border digital purchase in the past year. Clothing, footwear, and accessories was the leading product category bought digitally outside of the U.S., cited by 48% of cross-border digital buyers in the PayPal and Ipsos survey. U.S. buyers on foreign sites also differed from shoppers elsewhere in the Americas in terms of how often toys and hobbies (36%) and books and DVDs for entertainment or education (34%) were cited.”