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Online shopping rings up 1% of retail spending‚ set to total R9bn

Online shopping will reach 1% of overall retail this year.

Last year’s growth in online retail was 26%‚ taking it to R7.5-billion‚ according to new research by World Wide Worx. This year it is expected to be worth R9-billion.

“While 1% represents a very small proportion of overall retail‚ it is also a psychological barrier for investment in e-commerce initiatives by physical retailers‚” said World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck in a statement.

“The number also masks the extent to which a number of major retailers have exceeded the 1% online mark by a substantial margin.”

A forecast by World Wide Worx for the next five years‚ from 2016 to 2020‚ show online retail sales almost exactly doubling over this period.

“While this may seem significant‚ enthusiasm should be tempered by the awareness that the range of business models employed by South African online retailers is still somewhat conventional‚” said Goldstuck.

“This suggests that South African e-commerce has not attained the sophistication of major Western markets‚ where every category of product is characterised by a wide range of business models.”

According to data from the Target Group Index survey conducted by Ask Afrika‚ the number of online shoppers in South Africa at the beginning of 2015 was 3.2 million.

 

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