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China:Internet online shopping catches fancy of Chinese surfers |
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2004-11-18
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With estimated 90 million-plus Internet surfers, can online sales lag be any guess?
Latest survey by The China Internet Network Information Centre places Internet shopping on a new high thanks to improved online payment systems and delivery services. It was carried out among randomly selected from families and schools having sample size of 2,627 people in 20 cities across the country during September.
The survey reveals 17.9 per cent of consumers shop online frequently. And among those who have never purchased online, 63.7 per cent said they will convert to online shopping in the future, which, says the report, means greater market potential exists.
More than 90 per cent of the one time online shopper respondents quizzed said they will continue to use the new purchasing mode.
Improvement in online payment went up by about 41.8 per cent, the survey states.
And 43.2 per cent of online shopping payments are handled via money remittance personnel and 34.7 per cent are completed in person, the survey shows.
"Thanks to state-of-the-art encryption techniques, the safety of online payment has improved greatly," said Zhou Yonglin, an official with the E-bank Department of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.
"We have never found a credit card password revealing case among online payments so far," he added..
"Online payment provides a more convenient way for consumers who don''t carry cash ."
Cheaper prices are packing the cyperspace shopping malls.
However, the report identifies the problem areas like a shortage in types of online commodities, poor logistics and inefficient website management to name a few that continue to block further development of online shopping.
"How to adopt new strategies to expand the variety of available products, attract more consumers and improve the online business volume are now the major challenges facing online shopping websites," said Wang Juntao, president of 6688.com, a Beijing-based online business enterprise.
"Banks charge us a higher handling fee for transactions compared with our offline counterparts. This is still a headache for online business development," Wang said.
However,news that Amazon.com had acquired Joyo, the largest online retailer in China, at the cost of 622.5 million yuan (US$75 million) in late August, added more fuel to the online business fever.
China has an estimated 90 million-plus Internet surfers and the number is expanding rapidly. Such figures, give online business enterprises a good reason to choose a proper business scope and dig out the potential of loyal consumers, Wang said. |
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