More are shopping online despite slowdown

A study published by Taylor Nelson Sofres Interactive (TNSI) indicated that the percentage of online shoppers worldwide has grown from 10 percent in 2000 to 15 percent in 2001.

The survey, The Global e-commerce Report 2001, was based on 830 interviews in Singapore and more than 42,000 interviews in 36 countries across Asia Pacific (including Japan), Europe, North and South America. This year's interviews were conducted between April 2 and 25.

Without providing actual figures, the study revealed that 8 percent of Internet users in Asia Pacific shopped online. This is compared with 18 percent in the American continent (surveyed markets are the US, Canada and Argentina), and 12 percent in Europe (see Table 2).

In Asia Pacific, Korea has the highest percentage of online shoppers this year with 19 percent, followed by Australia (18 percent), Japan (17 percent) and Singapore (9 percent).

Other figures in Asia Pacific (see Table 1) include Taiwan (8 percent), Hong Kong (7 percent), China (6 percent), Indonesia (3 percent), India and Thailand (2 percent each), and the Philippines (1 percent).

The report also indicated that 15 percent of Internet surfers worldwide were "online dropouts". An online dropout is "an Internet user who considered buying or ordering goods or services on the Internet but decided not to", according to TNSI.

In Asia Pacific, Korea has the highest percentage of online dropouts (34 percent), followed by Japan (26 percent) and Australia (25 percent).

The study also shed some light on those who did not and do not plan to shop online, known as "abstainers". It found that 25 percent of these Net users were uncomfortable with revealing their credit card details over the Internet. General security concerns were cited by another 21 percent as a reason, while 8 percent listed both of the above as reasons for not conducting purchase transactions over the Internet. Only 6 percent of abstainers did not shop online for price-related reasons.

On average, Internet users in Asia Pacific tend to use the Web to source out information before making a purchase offline. TNIS described this group of people as offline shoppers.

Hong Kong leads in the percentage of offline shoppers with 31 percent, followed by Japan with 25 percent, and Korea with 22 percent.

In Australia, the offline shopper figure stands at 20 percent, which is well above the global average of 15 percent, the study indicated.

In other Asia Pacific markets, the offline shopper rates are: Taiwan (15 percent), Singapore (11 percent), Malaysia and Thailand (10 percent each), Indonesia (5 percent), the Philippines (4 percent) and India (2 percent).

Table 1: Internet Statistics by AP countries (%)

Table 2: Internet Statistics by Region for 2001 (%)