Filipinos quitting high-street shops for Internet: study

Dominating the Philippine e-commerce landscape are local deals and promo websites, although the most visited is eBay (12.5 per cent). It is followed by Sulit (10.1), Metrodeal (7.2), Cebu Pacific (6.0), Ensogo (5.5), and Amazon (5.1). The preference for local sites is due to fear of hidden charges, concerns about security and speed of delivery, and the availability of items on local sites.

Music download sites (43.9 per cent) are the most visited in the Philippines, followed by personal, education or professional development portals (40.3 per cent), and computer software websites (33.9 per cent). Meanwhile, app stores registered the highest amount of online spending, closely followed by supermarkets and airlines.

The study also reveals a rise in ethical spending, with 78.6 per cent of respondents buying items because they are environment-friendly, up from 75.2 per cent in 2011. 

In general, the Filipino online shopper is cautious in making online purchases, with most respondents (89 per cent) citing security as a top concern, closely followed by speed of transaction (88.5 per cent), convenience of payment methods (88.5 per cent). Other factors considered important by 80 per cent respondents are price/values, return or exchange policy, website reputation, online review, customer service, low delivery charges, and use of various payment methods.

The majority of the shoppers (77 per cent) tend to go to the online shopping sites they have used before.

In terms of gender, women tend to be more positive, have higher involvement and openness about online shopping than men, who are more concerned about security issues.  With respondents aged from 18 to 64, and the study shows that 40.4 per cent of Filipinos access the Internet to shop. 

While Filipinos currently rank lower than their neighbours for online shopping, the country’s index of 71 is up 7 points from 2011’s 64, and 14 from 2010’s 57. The same is true for their online shopping satisfaction rating, which rose to 86.1 per cent, from 84.4 per cent in 2011. This differs from the fluctuating or “flat” trends among the top scorers like China, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore.

Mobile e-commerce is a key area of growth, with the number of Filipinos with Internet access via mobile devices rising to 78.5 per cent from 74.6 per cent in 2011, and the number of mobile-online shoppers doubling in the last 12 months: 21.4 per cent in 2012 (versus 11 per cent in 2011). The expansion of this market will be facilitated by the availability of more apps that should assuage security concerns.