{"id":547678,"date":"2006-01-09T18:08:22","date_gmt":"2006-01-09T18:08:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/547678-sa-spending-more-online.html"},"modified":"2006-01-09T18:08:22","modified_gmt":"2006-01-09T18:08:22","slug":"sa-spending-more-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/547678-sa-spending-more-online.html","title":{"rendered":"SA spending more online"},"content":{"rendered":"

The growth rate is down from the 25% acceleration seen in 2004, which the report, entitled "Online Retail in South Africa 2006", attributed to the high cost of broadband internet access in South Africa. Online sales growth of only 20% is forecast in 2006. <\/font><\/p>\n

The figures exclude the sale of air tickets online, which dwarf the numbers for online retail. <\/font><\/p>\n

The four South African airlines selling tickets online – kulula.com, FlySAA.com, 1Time and Nationwide-between them accounted for R1.8bn in e-commerce in 2005, more than double the 2004 figure of R850m and more than three times the size of conventional online retail. <\/font><\/p>\n

The report showed that the total spent online on retail goods during the November-December 2005 holiday season fell to 16% of annual sales from the 20% average across all online retailers that was reported in 2002 and 2003 and the 18% in 2004. <\/font><\/p>\n

However, the number of online retail sites has grown from 719 at the end of 2003 to 826 at the end of 2005. This growth has come despite 210 sites – more than a quarter of those online at the end of 2004 – closing down during 2004 and 2005. <\/font><\/p>\n

No less than 311 new sites came online during this time. <\/font><\/p>\n

The fastest growing major categories in terms of number of sites were auctions (230% increase in sites), gifts (50%) and apparel (32%). <\/font><\/p>\n

Gifts have been identified as representing significant opportunity, but by the same token has become one of the areas of greatest competition in online retail. <\/font><\/p>\n

"The market can expect to see fallout in this sector, as well as in auction sites, which seem to have been fired up by the huge success of eBay, without having the market and structural benefits enjoyed by eBay," noted Goldstuck. <\/font><\/p>\n

"However, this sector is also dominated by a few large players, mainly Aucor and Bid-or-Buy, and many of the latecomers will disappear." <\/font><\/p>\n

The market is dominated by ten online retail sites, which between them account for most online retail sales in South Africa, according to "Online Retail in South Africa 2006". <\/font><\/p>\n

They are: the two major malls, M-Web ShopZone and Digital Mall; the two largest online grocers, Pick ‘n’ Pay Home Shopping and Woolworths’ the two largest online book retailers, Kalahari.net and Exclusive Books; the largest online florist, NetFlorist; the largest online wine retailer, Cybercellar; the largest online electronics store, Digital Planet; and the largest online health and beauty store, Ascot Direct. <\/font><\/p>\n

Kalahari.net also dominated several other categories, including music, where Look ‘n Listen and Musica are expected to offer serious competition, and movies, where it has almost no competition. <\/font><\/p>\n

"The biggest obstacle to growth identified by all the executives we interviewed continued to be speed of internet access, and more specifically lack of affordable access to broadband," elaborated Goldstuck. <\/font><\/p>\n

"But there is a growing realisation that the growing experience levels of users will also make a significant impact. We call it the ‘Experience Curve’, and we believe that it is the key to online retail in South Africa."<\/font> <\/p>\n

Inet-Bridge ||\u00a0 <\/font>Discuss this article<\/font><\/a> <\/p>\n

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Online retail sales in South Africa grew by 20% in 2005, to R514m from R428m in 2004, according to a new report from World Wide Worx released on Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}