High loyalty among online shoppers: UPS Pulse survey

Mobile websites enjoy the greatest share of mobile shopping spending as compared to mobile apps, as noted in the survey UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper: A Customer Experience Study for Asia and Australia by comScore and logistics company UPS.

Conducted in February, the study included more than 4,000 APAC online shoppers and focused on the major Asia Pacific e-commerce consumption markets of Australia, China, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

It is part of a global study that measures e-commerce preferences of consumers and the integrated buying experience of shopping in physical stores and online, also known as omni-channel retailing. 

Australians have the strongest affinity for bricks-and-mortar stores, and mobile shopping is less prevalent among them. In terms of preference, Chinese consumers find mobile apps easier to use, while Singapore and Australian consumers prefer mobile websites.

Some 58 per cent of Asian shoppers are likely to make comparisons when using mobile apps, as opposed to 37 per cent of Australia shoppers who would do so. Location-based deal services, meanwhile, are more popular in Singapore and Hong Kong than in Australia.

“Singapore, Hong Kong and Australian customers tend to stay most abreast with retailer updates on Facebook through ‘liking’ their pages,” the survey stated.

The survey suggested that it is another retail opportunity when consumers collect their online purchase in-store, as two in every three Asian consumers have bought additional items during this process.

Variety of payment options is one of the most important factors when Asian consumers go through an online check-out, and more than half of them want to know estimated delivery dates and total costs early in the process.

“Three to four days is the average time consumers in China and Hong Kong are willing to wait to receive online purchases,” it added. “Shoppers in Australia and Singapore are willing to wait longer.”

Overall shopper satisfaction in Asia and Australia is driven by the variety of brands and products offered, ease of check-out, number of available payment options and ability to track online purchases, with ease of making returns/exchanges ranking high in the areas needing improvement.

The majority of consumers in Asia say tracking is “essential” while Australian shoppers say that it is “nice to have”. Some 61 per cent of the respondents want to track packages through e-mail alerts, while 65 per cent want the ability to track the shipment directly on the retailer’s site.