The vast majority of active South African internet users are now very happy to buy stuff online, according to the results of a survey of the online retail market, released today. The only type of shopping we’re still not comfortable doing on the internet? Grocery shopping.

The survey was conducted by World Wide Worx between December 2011 and January 2012 across 25 markets. It measured the tendency of consumers who used the internet at least once a week, to shop online. Of the respondents, 73% said they were likely to make an online purchase in the next six months, while 89% said they were satisfied with their overall online shopping experience to date.

These percentages are similar to last year’s results, but the number of online shoppers in South Africa as a whole has grown, indicating that online retail in this country is most definitely on the rise.

The popularity of group deal or coupon sites, online gaming, applications, music downloads and ticket sale sites for arts and music events, has contributed to the increase in online purchasing behaviour. Respondents cited lower prices (91%), payment convenience (90%) and secure payment facilities (90%) as the main attractions of online shopping.

Interestingly, the survey showed that while South Africans are now prepared to shop for almost anything online, we still prefer to do our grocery shopping in person, in store. Online grocery shopping figures have declined to about 9 per cent his year, with the reasons ranging from wanting to hand pick fresh products ourselves, to complaints about the inflexibility of delivery times and too many mistakes being made by in-store stock pickers.

Let’s see which retailer catches on to that first, and tries to improve our perception and experience of buying our weekly groceries online.

[Source: Times Live]