Online shopping around the world
New research demonstrates wide variations between online buying behaviour across the globe. The survey, from Pitney Bowes, asked 10,000 consumers from 10 countries about their online shopping habits and preferences and uncovered some interesting differences.
Overall 93% of consumers had shopped online, 49% in the last 30 days, showing the mass market appeal of ecommerce around the world. In the UK, South Korea and Germany this rose to 98% buying on the web, ahead of Canada, where only 82% of consumers bought online. UK shoppers were the biggest buyers of books, film and music on the web, while the Chinese bought more shoes than anyone else.
But the biggest differences came in what made consumers decide to buy or abandon transactions:
- Germans and South Koreans ranked ease and speed of the checkout process far above the Japanese
- French consumers were seven times more interested in being able to track their orders than the Japanese
- Consumers in the UK (79%) are three times more sensitive to shipping prices than consumers in South Korea (25%)
- Accurate delivery dates were twice as important to Chinese and South Korean consumers than in Canada
- Chinese consumers rated a clear returns policy as three times more important than shoppers in the US and Brazil.
In the run up to Christmas the survey points to some key facts that etailers need to take into account when it comes to customer service. Firstly, understand that there can be significant differences between what consumers are looking for around the world and make sure that your site reflects this. Arm your agents with the right information to answer customer queries and look at deploying web chat at key points where consumers abandon transactions to prevent them clicking onto competitor sites. Essentially it comes down to listening to your customers and providing the right information at the right time to meet their customer service needs if you want to have a happy online Christmas.
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