77% of South Africans with internet access are shopping online. The most frequent purchases are music, movies and airline tickets (www.southafrica.info, 24 March 2010)
This week’s theme: Online in SA
Related facts:
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- Big on banking Of those who used the internet in the past 7 days,...
- Smoke SA There are more than 1,000 growers of tobacco in South Africa,...
- It's for reseach, honest Almost 1 million South Africans access the internet from the workplace....
- Paperless news 5.3 million adults have accessed the internet in the past 4...
The main problem with shopping online in South Africa is the lack of a reliable postal service. In the UK online shopping offers the most competitive prices on all products as the consumer has confidence of delivery.
Hence, in SA online purchases are largely for items not requiring physical delivery – music, movies, and airline tickets.
The airlines skew that pie a lot. They probably account for around 70% of the total rand value spend if not more.
If you had to factor the buy only airline tickets portion out then it is quite possible that the picture will look totally different.
Mass online shopping for groceries and similar purchases would impact positively on traffic congestion and and presumably more quality time spend with family and loved ones.For now hopefully not for long its only a pipe-dream.
In order for e-commerce to flourish in South Africa, it is important to develop local payment options and delivery systems. It is also important to have always-on, affordable broadband access. There’s an interesting article Andy Higgins, MD of bidorbuy, wrote on this subject: http://memeburn.com/2010/05/can-sa-expect-a-boom-in-ecommerce/