At least 40 per cent of consumers globally prefer e-shopping over brick and mortar stores to buy apparel and footwear. This has been revealed in Total Retail Survey 2017 by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Around 24,471 consumers from 29 countries were questioned in the survey.
With the continuing shift in customer preferences towards online shopping, a lingering low-growth environment in many parts of the world, and an unforgiving global marketplace that demands unprecedented technological sophistication, some retailers are being confronted with threats to their very existence.
The report further reveals that 52 per cent of them prefer to research their fashion purchases on the web (31 per cent on a computer and 12 per cent on a mobile phone), compared to 34 per cent who would rather do it in-store.
However, 51 per cent of those covered under survey are interested in buying in a shop, while 24 per cent of them prefer to use their PC, and 9 per cent of them favour their smartphone.
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“Of all product categories, apparel/footwear has the highest consumption likelihood in the last 12 months (77%), with 28% of consumers worldwide buying the majority or the entirety of their apparel and footwear online in the same twelve months,” mentioned PwC.
Country-wise, Polish consumers are keenest to rely on their PCs for product research (48% of them do), while Thai consumers (19%) are at the opposite end of the spectrum. In terms of apparel purchases, Chinese consumers are the most web-devoted (72% of them buy online), followed by Indonesians (54%) and Thais (50%). In Europe, Italy ranks first with 48%.
