Australians will spend more than $13.6 billion online in 2011, an increase of more than 13 % on last year’s $12 billion according to new research by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Frost & Sullivan.
Almost half of this, or an estimated $6 billion, will be spent with offshore online retailers, an increase of 25 percent on the $4.8 billion spent offshore last year.
The increase is already rattling some retailers with Harvey Norman believed to have dumped Logitech products from their stores after the company started selling products direct to consumers via their own online store.(See story here).
Frost & Sullivan senior research manager Phil Harpur said online shopping, both locally and offshore, is expected to grow at least twice as fast as the total retail market in Australia over the next four years.
“Online spending by Australians will reach $21.7 billion by 2015, representing a compound annual growth rate of 12.6 percent,” Harpur said.
Australia’s retail landscape is commencing a structural shift as more consumers start to spend a greater share of their wallet online, the report says. Some 86 percent of online shoppers surveyed indicated that over the next 12 months, they would increase or at least maintain their current level of online expenditure.
In Australia, more than one third of survey participants indicated they were using a smartphone or a tablet device to buy products online.
According to the researchers, the tablet device has been one of the key drivers of online retail sales in the past 12 months and will continue to drive sales in the next year as new products are introduced into the market.
Overall, Australians are tipped to each spend more than an estimated $600 online in 2011, compared to $536 in 2010.
PwC’s global retail and consumer advisory leader, Stuart Harker, said offshore online sales also appear to be a contributing factor in poor performance of Australian retail sales over the last 12 months.
But – contrary to some traditional bricks-and-mortar vendors’ claims – the survey found that less than one percent of consumers surveyed said they shopped overseas online to avoid GST.
