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Online shopping sites that offer an easy, convenient shopping experience attract loyal customers Tweet: #MasterCard Online Shopping survey reveals online retail trends in South Africa http://bit.ly/122NEFR Cape Town, South Africa – 27 June 2013 – The latest MasterCard Online Shopping Survey has revealed that a substantial 91% of South Africans who shop online are highly satisfied with their overall experience, a 4% increase from the 87% who said the same thing in the 2012 survey. A further indication of South Africans’ positive sentiment for online shopping is that 76% of respondents return to an online shopping site that they have used before and 74% expressed that they felt it was both easy and convenient to make online purchases. These figures show slight increases – 2% and 1% respectively – when compared to the previous survey’s results. Despite this positive sentiment towards shopping online, the number of South Africans accessing the Internet to shop online is down 4% from the previous survey, with 54% of respondents saying that they usually use the Internet for shopping. “While online shopping continues to be a regular Internet activity for more than half of South Africans who are actively online, there is a slight shift downwards in their online purchasing behaviour, which could be attributed to the slowdown recorded in the economy during the survey period,” says Philip Panaino, Division President, MasterCard, South Africa. “This is supported by The South African Reserve Bank noting in its fourth quarter review of 2012 that retail activity was disappointing as consumer spending was negatively affected by a pickup in inflation.” “There has been a rapid rise in the number of South Africans classified as active Internet users – those who fairly recently acquired regular access to the Internet – which means we are seeing a larger-than-ever base of users who have never shopped online before,” says Arthur Goldstuck, Managing Director of World Wide Worx. “These users add to South Africa’s population of more experienced Internet users – those who have been online for five years or more – which has increased significantly from under four million in 2012 to around 4.6 million this year. This means that even as the amount spent online keeps rising steadily – at more than 30% a year according to our data – the proportion of users shopping online is declining, which ties in with the decline MasterCard has recorded of active online [...]