Online Shopping in Indonesia Will Grow to 15% in 6 Months

Just the other day, we read of Ipsos’s survey on the online shopping behavior of Internet users in Indonesia. The survey revealed that 44% of internet users in Indonesia buy goods online in the last 3 months.

Yesterday, MasterCard Worldwide released a survey result on similar topic. To know their customer’s tendency to shop online, MasterCard Worldwide held MasterCard Worldwide Online Shopping Survey. MasterCard did a survey on 7,373 customers during December 5, 2011 to February 6, 2012. Surveyed customers came from 14 countries in Asia Pacific.

The result, 57% of people surveyed in Indonesia use the Internet to shop online, not much different from the result of Ipsos’ survey. While for the next 6 months, 71% Indonesian people intend to use the Internet to shop online. It means, Indonesian people’s tendency to shop online will increase 15% in the next 6 months.

Of the 14 Asia Pacific countries surveyed, Indonesia is still behind established countries like Thailand, China, Japan and Korea, but the growth is fairly rapid by only behind Vietnam and is equivalent to the growth of online shopping in the Philippines.

Mobile Shopping

Of the total people surveyed, 71% claimed to prefer to use the web rather than mobile site for online shopping. But 59% people in Thailand, 37% in China, 32% in Vietnam and India are using mobile phones to shop. They shop online using mobile phone is mainly for two reasons: because it’s more convenience and because of growing availability of applications for shopping online.

In Indonesia, the number of mobile shopping is not yet significant. It could be due to two reasons mentions above are not or cannot be found in Indonesia. Not many applications for online shopping are available, and if there is any, customer still feels more comfortable and safer to do online transaction through website.

If Indonesia follows the global trend in which mobile shopping activity will increase, there’s a chance to create applications that can make customers feel safer and more convenient to shop online. Perhaps you and your startup are interested? If so, try to check the items often purchased through mobile shopping. Those items are: applications, music, coupons/vouchers, clothing/accessories and movie tickets.

Infographic for this survey can be viewed in this page.