For the first time, clothing and fashion accessories have overtaken apps to become the top category of items purchased via smartphones, according to the latest MasterCard Online Shopping Survey. Half of Chinese shoppers making purchases via mobile devices, according to the press release.
The survey, which serves as a benchmark that measures consumers’ propensity to shop online, was conducted across 25 markets between November and December 2013. The report for the Asia/ Pacific region included interviews with 7010 respondents from 14 markets who were asked questions about their online shopping habits.
Two-thirds of Asia/Pacific consumers go online to shop, with nearly 100% of respondents from China indicating that they have made at least one online purchase in the past three months. South Korean and Australian consumers are also passionate about shopping on the net with 97% and 90% of respondents having made at least one purchase online, respectively.
The results also show a spike in the number of Indian respondents who use the internet for shopping from 53.1% in 2012 to 80% in 2013. Consequently, the percentage of Indians who have shopped online in the last three months has also gone up from 70.9% in 2012 to 87.8% in 2013.
The ubiquity of internet-enabled mobile phones has many savvy shoppers in China (59.4%), Thailand (51.2%), Korea (47.6%), India (47.1%) and Indonesia (46.7%) shopping via their smartphones.
In terms of growth rates, top markets for mobile shopping include Taiwan (up by 17% since 2012), India (up by 16.8%) and the Philippines (up by 11.4%) who are proving to be keen adopters. On the other hand, consumers from New Zealand (15.0%), Japan (22.9%) and Australia (24.8%) show the lowest intent to purchase using their smartphones.
Across the 14 Asia/Pacific markets, convenience (46.8%), the ability to shop on the go (41.3%) and the growing availability of apps that make it easier to shop (40.8%) emerged as the most compelling reasons for driving smartphone shopping. Clothing and fashion accessories (26.0%) topped the list of items purchased through smartphones, followed by apps (22.4%) and music (18.8%).
“For the first time, we see that clothing and fashion accessories have overtaken apps to become the top category of items purchased via smartphones. This indicates a strong and successful shift by merchants to enhance the mobile experience for consumers to make it more convenient,” said Pierre Burret, Region Head, Asia/Pacific, MasterCard Advisors.
New mobile technologies are also gaining traction among consumers in the region, with mobile banking apps having the highest awareness-familiarity levels at 48.7%, followed by in-game-app shopping (35.7%) and in-social-networking-app shopping (34.9%).
Asia Pacific includes: Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Malaysia. New Zealand, Taiwan, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, India. Philippines.
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