The value of purchases made on mobile phones last year grew 365 percent to NT$4,629 (US$152.45) per person from NT$994 the previous year, as more shoppers in Taiwan placed orders using handheld devices, the Market Intelligence and Consulting Institute (MIC, 資策會) said in a report yesterday.
The average value of purchases on PCs last year was much higher at NT$17,427 per person, but experienced a significantly milder increase of 1.3 percent from the NT$17,203 the previous year, the report showed.
“There is a growing trend of more people using their handheld devices to buy electronic products or clothing online,” MIC analyst Chen Ying-chu (陳映竹) said in a report.
Chen said online shopping is becoming increasingly individualized, compared to the “group buying” offered by many early adopters of mobile shopping sites or apps, which involves offering products at significantly reduced prices on the condition that a minimum number of buyers make the purchase.
The institute’s report was compiled based on a survey of 4,073 online shoppers aged 20 or above that was conducted in January and February.
The poll showed that the number of respondents who bought products using handheld devices or mobile apps last year increased by between 3 and 4 percent annually to account for 8.6 percent and 7.6 percent of total online shoppers respectively.
Respondents who said they surf the Internet every day spent about 2.6 hours daily searching for information on various Web sites last year, 0.4 hours of which was devoted to “window-shopping” at e-commerce sites, the survey said.
“It is understandable that more people buy online because most e-commerce sites make the shopping process simpler and quicker,” Chen said, citing the average of 20 minutes it takes online shoppers to complete a purchase.
As telecom operators prepare to launch 4G services as early as the second half of the year, the popularity of online shopping is likely to continue increasing this year from last year, the MIC said.
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