Online shopping on the increase | Bangkok Post: tech

SURVEY

A MasterCard survey of online shopping habits has found that 77 percent of Thai respondents accessed the Internet every day, while 63 percent enjoy shopping online, with women's clothes, CDs/DVDs and cosmetics among the top selling products.

The latest survey of online shopping habits by MasterCard Worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2009, which covered 8,000 respondents across 14 markets, revealed that Thai online shoppers shopped more frequently.

The top reasons for using the Internet are for receiving/sending emails (94 percent), followed by reading news online (87 percent), online shopping (63 percent), browsing materials for work or study (63 percent), browsing for leisure (61 percent), and chatting with friends (58 percent).

Eileen Wee, vice president and country manager Thailand, MasterCard Worldwide, said it has been a big year for Thailand e-commerce, with increased availability of high speed Internet.

More importantly, the average spending in Thailand over the three months has also gone up from $400 (13,200 baht) to $550 (18,150 baht), with males between the ages of 35 and 44 spending above average at about $620 (20,460 baht).

In addition, the study found the top five products or services bought online for Thais were women's clothing and accessories (47 percent), CDs/DVDs/VCDs (30 percent), cosmetics (30 percent), personal care and beauty (29 percent), and airline tickets (24 percent).

The survey also found the top five merchant websites were music downloads (53 percent), clothing and accessories (50 percent), cinemas (49 percent), supermarket/superstores (43 percent) and books/CDs/DVDs (41 percent).

The industry will also be encouraged by the positive attitudes exhibited towards online shopping, with 85 percent saying that shopping online is convenient, 81 percent saying it is easy and 77 percent saying it is fun.

The increase in online shopping was driven by key factors which included convenient payment methods (88 percent), goods exchange or return policy (87 percent), secure payment facilities (86 percent), price/value of the items (86 percent), low or no extra charges for usage of payments methods or delivery of service and good customer service (83 percent).

Among the total respondents, 500 were Thais between the ages of 18 and 64 years with personal bank accounts and who accessed the Internet at least once a week.