Singaporeans are top online shoppers in South-east Asia: Visa survey

SINGAPORE — Singaporeans are South-east Asia’s top online shoppers, according to a study published by Visa today (Nov 20).

The Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 2014 found that 58 per cent of Singaporeans made online purchases at least once a month. 50 per cent of Singaporeans surveyed said they would conduct all their shopping online if it was practical to do so and 26 per cent shopped online at least once a week.

According to the survey, Singaporeans between the ages of 25 to 44 were the ones who shopped the most frequently online. 53 per cent of respondents between the ages of 25 to 34 and 44 per cent between ages 34 to 44 shopped online at least several times a month.

Ms Ooi Huey Tyng, Visa’s Country Manager for Singapore and Brunei noted that the growth of online shopping was far exceeding regular physical transactions.

“Online shopping continues to grow in popularity in Singapore with 19 per cent year-on-year growth in eCommerce transactions performed by Singaporean Visa cardholders,” she said. “In comparison, domestic face-to-face Visa transactions for October grew at 6 per cent year-on-year.

“There is a growing trend of consumers spending more time and money shopping online. As technology evolves, we see the blurring of lines between shopping at a retail store and online,” she added.

The most popular category for Singaporean online shoppers was in travel. More than 51 per cent of the respondents bought all their flight tickets online and 46 per cent bought all their travel accommodation online. The next most popular categories for online purchases were for concert or sporting tickets and games.

The Visa Consumer Payment Attitudes Study 2014 was conducted in July this year, across Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. There were 500 respondents in each of the four markets. The average cost of the most expensive item that Singaporeans have purchased online was S$2,887.