For Sharon Lee, shopping online couldn't be easier. It took her barely three minutes to walk from her apartment to the nearest 7-Eleven where she picked up and paid for the book she had ordered over the Internet three days ago.
"Instead of waiting around the house for the mailman to show, I can go pick up the package at the closest convenience store whenever I want," said the 28-year-old housewife.
"Shopping this way is not only quicker and cheaper, but best of all I don't have to risk exposing my credit card number on the Web," she said.
More people like Lee are being drawn to online shopping thanks to the accelerating integration of the virtual and real worlds, which is expected to bring about another Internet boom after the rupture of the bubble last year, analysts said.
"This new type of business model is expected to give a big boost to Taiwan's languishing e-business," said Pearl Sung, research director at the quasi-official Marketing Intelligence Center.
"It can bring about an additional 30 to 50 percent growth in e-trade."
Nicebeauty, a domestic online store that sells cosmetics and skin-care products, has seen its revenues jump two-fold each month since it went into partnership with 7-Eleven in November last year.
"We now generate over NT$20 million (US$578,000) in sales each month and over 50 percent of that comes from transactions through 7-Eleven," said Selena Yang, marketing manager of Nicebeauty.
The company's "overnight" success would have been impossible without its partnership with President Chain Store Corp (
"Working together with `real' stores is the key to success," said Yang, adding that the Web site offers products at least 30 percent cheaper than market prices.
As the largest local convenience store chain, President Chain Store runs nearly 2,900 7-Eleven outlets in Taiwan, and its partnership with 35 local online stores has brought in over 150,000 online transactions a month with an average monthly growth of 10 to 20 percent.
"We are working with online stores to offer web users the advantage of shopping at home without having to pay for shipping nor disclose credit card numbers on the Internet," said Tony Wang, a manager at President Chain Store.
Taiwan's e-commerce on a business-to-consumer basis grew 142 percent to NT$39.5 billion in 2000.
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