Fashion is top e-commerce buy of Asian consumers: survey

Only Japan bucked the trend, with grocery being their top online shopping choice.

Fashion has emerged as the top e-commerce pick by Asian consumers, with citizens from six out of seven markets surveyed indicating that they purchased clothing, shoes, and accessories online in the past three months since April, a survey by payments network company Rapyd revealed.

Majority of consumer respondents from Thailand (69%), Taiwan (61%), Singapore (74%), Malaysia (76%), Indonesia (76%), and India (72%) all bought clothing, shoes and accessories online during the period.

Meanwhile, groceries emerged as the top e-commerce category in Japan with 60% of survey respondents indicating this, although fashion emerged as its second top-pick.

Rapyd noted that the high share of online grocery purchases in Japan represents both pick-up orders and deliveries from Japan, which features a growing flexible and freelance work economy.

Online purchase frequency behavior varies across the markets. India led the pack with a whopping 49% of local consumers surveyed found to have made online purchases daily whilst 31% shop online on a weekly basis.

Similarly, at 35%, online consumers in Indonesia slightly outpaced those who make online purchases weekly (33%).

In contrast, only 15% of Japanese consumers tended to make online purchases daily, with more (40%) indicating that they prefer to make online purchases weekly.

The remaining markets also saw more consumers buying on a weekly basis than on a monthly basis: Singapore (17% daily; 44% weekly), Malaysia (24% daily, 34% weekly), Thailand (23% daily, 38% weekly), and Taiwan (19% daily, 35% weekly).

Conducted in March and April, Rapyd surveyed 3,500 individuals on their payment and online consumption behavior, with 500 respondents coming from each market.

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