The future of e-commerce or what the audience is afraid of

Publication date: 06 Feb 2019

Mobile shopping is growing exponentially. Over the past two years, Russians started making purchases on their mobile devices one and a half times more often that can be said about people of all ages, GfK’s research shows.

The Russian e-commerce market, however, still has growth potential. In the U.S., where digitization started much earlier, more than half of buyers already use smartphones to shop online, and age dependencies have already become easy to trace. It is no surprise that the older generation is more conservative and uses smartphones less. That is confirmed by GfK’s FutureBuy study.

Considering that younger users shop on their smartphones in close to 100% of cases, it is the older generation who can further expand the e-commerce market. If the U.S. market should already be working with baby boomers, the Russian market should start getting ready. What is stopping people of ripe age from using smartphones to choose and buy goods?

As GfK’s research conducted in the U.S. shows, concerns about personal information security are the main obstacle to shopping via mobile.

Whom do consumers trust the most? Online Market Intelligence company asked Russian Internet users this question. The survey findings show that half of respondents trust banks, government institutions go slightly behind, while online stores come the last but one in this kind of rating.

What is also important is that people of the older generation are more cautious in all situations. What are they afraid of? The answer to this question can help to create ads for cautious customers.

The above-mentioned options cover almost all possible answers. Those were only 1.5% of respondents who chose an “Other” option. At the same time, there were quite many people who had never been concerned about personal information security: 8.6% of all respondents on average and 6.9% of people over 54. Over the time, they will think about it as well.