First ecommerce report from IAB South Africa, Effective Measure

The report, described as the first detailed demographic and sentiment based report across online and mobile usage in the accelerating local digital retailing sector, includes key etailing demographic segments, barriers to moving to online shopping, which brands and suppliers are winning the online shopping race and what gets South African shoppers clicking.

Effective Measure country MD South Africa, Alan Morrissey says, "South Africa's digital citizens are very comfortable with online transactions. With 73.76% of South Africa's online shoppers using the internet to make banking transactions and over one third using their mobile for online banking there is a huge opportunity for the development of online commerce across all platforms."

Significantly, the research found the majority of online shopping is devoted to South African sites (84.33%). "South African loyalty to local products and services represents a huge boost for the economy and marketers need to retain this momentum, as global etailers aggressively enter the South African market."

Key findings

Over 10,000 internet users were surveyed over December 2013 using the IAB South Africa member base with some of the key findings include:

• Mobile traffic increased from an average of 32% to 47% over the period
  
• Most shoppers come from Gauteng with 45% of active shoppers coming from this province
  
• A lack of trust in online payment systems remains the most significant inhibitor to those reluctant to shop online
  
• Kalahari.com, Amazon, Groupon, Bidorbuy and Woolworths are the top 5 sites those surveyed bought from

To download a copy of the report, go to www.effectivemeasure.com/south-african-ecommerce-report-february-2014.