Thais buy impulsively when shopping online: Mastercard
LAST YEAR nearly three-fifths of Thais made purchases through their mobile phones, an increase of 7.6 per cent over the past two years of the MasterCard Online Shopping Behaviour Study.
Covering 14 Asia-Pacific countries, the study indicates that online shopping is becoming more important for Thais, with those accessing the Internet for online shopping increasing by 9.6 per cent since 2012.
The preference for mobile shopping is due to convenience (60.1 per cent), apps that make it easy (47.6 per cent) and ability to do it on the go (45.5 per cent).
Preference for shopping in actual stores over shopping via smartphone has dropped 22.1 per cent since 2012.
The most common purchases are apps (33.8 per cent), clothing/accessories (28.1 per cent), personal/beauty care brands (20.1 per cent) and toys/gifts (15.8 per cent).
High-ticket items are airline tickets and home appliances/electronics.
Online shoppers – 76.9 per cent of whom are women and 75.7 per cent people aged 25-34 years – who claim to have a greater tendency to shop impulsively when browsing online (69.6 per cent) are considerably higher than those who have a lesser tendency (13.7 per cent) to do so.
The key trigger for impulsive shopping is low price or substantial discount and advertisements/promotions.
The top categories that trigger impulse buys are clothing/accessories and personal beauty care brands.
Key observations:
n 80.9 per cent of individuals have made an online purchase in the last three months, up since 2012-13;
n 86.8 per cent have experienced browsing online leading to an online purchase, compared to only 6.5 per cent who have not experienced the same;
n 63.5 per cent of online purchases are meant for respondents themselves, while 22 per cent are gifts;
n The highest traffic is seen for sites of clothing/ accessories (43.6 per cent), cinema (37.6 per cent), music downloads (37.6 per cent) and apps stores (36.4 per cent);
n Lazada is the most commonly visited site for online shopping, followed by Facebook, OLX, We Love Shopping and eBay.
Three-fourths of online shoppers tend to go to the same sites again and consider online reviews before purchasing.
More than seven in 10 find it convenient to shop online – down from previous years.
Of reasons for not purchasing online, concern for security of online transactions has seen a significant drop of 23.4 per cent since 2013. Overall, there are fewer barriers to purchase compared with previous years.
