Online shopping has outpaced traditional retail in the Asia Pacific as more people turn to ecommerce.
Online shoppers who shop ‘a few times a month’ regularly are now outpacing their offline counterparts by 42% vs 31%. Those who shop online ‘once every few months’ leapfrog offline shoppers by 66%.
This is according to a study by Reprise, which found that promotions and sales are the best way to engage SEA markets as 61% of shoppers wait to shop online during the big sales days, vs the 39% ‘anytime’ shoppers.
However, the shipping fee is the biggest ‘turn-off’ for shoppers, as the top three perceived barriers to online shopping ‘shipping fee’ (57%), ‘shipping time’ (55%), and the inability to ‘touch and feel’ products before purchasing (48%).
The study also found that online ads are the key driver to engage new buyers as one in two online shoppers look to online ads for discovering new brands and products when purchasing online.
“We have seen unprecedented growth in ecommerce in the last 12 months. Many markets in APAC have leapfrogged as much as 5 times, already meeting projections for 2025,” said Ritika Gupta, the ecommerce director for APAC at Reprise.