Indian netizens world’s third biggest online shoppers…What nonsense !

ET headline screams “Indian netizens world’s third biggest online shoppers”

When I read that headline, I was quite surprised. The instant question came to my mind was, how can a country with such miniscule Internet penetration have world’s third biggest online shoppers? No way !

To my surprise ET completely misdirected the readers with that headline. The reality is that out of the total Indians that have shopped online most of them have used credit cards for purpose of online transactions – 84% to be precise, which is third highest in the world percentage wise

Here are some of the interesting and real findings from the Nielsen survey:

Among Internet users, the highest percentage shopping online is found in South Korea, where 99 per cent of those with Internet access have used it to shop, followed by the UK (97 per cent), Germany (97 per cent), Japan (97 per cent) with the U.S. eighth, at 94 per cent. Additionally, in South Korea, 79 per cent of these Internet users have shopped in the past month, followed by the UK (76 per cent) and Switzerland (67 per cent) with the U.S. at 57 per cent.

Globally, the most popular and purchased items over the Internet are Books (41 per cent purchased in the past three months), Clothing/Accessories/Shoes (36 per cent), Videos / DVDs / Games (24 per cent), Airline Tickets (24 per cent) and Electronic Equipment (23 per cent).

More than 70 per cent of Indians and more than 60 per cent of Irish and UAE Internet users said they bought airline tickets/reservations on the Internet in the last three months, making travel the fourth most popular shopping category on the web.

Payment Methods for Internet Shopping

Credit cards are by far the most common method of payment for online purchases — 60 per cent of global online consumers used their credit card for a recent online purchase, while one in four online consumers chose PayPal. Of those paying with a credit card, more than half (53 per cent) used Visa.

Turkish online shoppers (who represent the economic elite in that country) topped global rankings for credit card usage (91 per cent) for online purchases followed by 86 per cent of Irish online shoppers and 84 per cent of Indian and UAE online shoppers.

While Latin American and Asian online shoppers are also more likely to use credit cards than any other form of payment, debit cards are most popular among UK (59 per cent) and U.S. (40 per cent) online shoppers.

How irresponsible of editors in mainstream media to mis-represent the facts to create sensational-attention-grabbing headlines !