Global marketing news – 23 November 2015
India to surpass US for internet penetration
The internet population of India is set to hit 402 million next month, overtaking the internet population of the US for the first time ever.
It will make India the second biggest internet market in the world, second only to China.
The prediction was made by the IAMAI and IMRB International, who also released a detailed breakdown of the internet population in the country.
There is a big gender imbalance, with 70% of Indian internet users being male, with this proportion rising to 90% in rural areas.
There was also a strong skew towards younger people, with three-quarters of internet users in the country being aged 18-30.
Two-thirds of internet users in India are accessing the web using a mobile device, with the popularity of mobile being driven by a rise in affordable smartphones.
Canadians to be extra price-sensitive this Christmas
Research by the analytics company SAS has revealed that Canadians will be very price-sensitive this Christmas.
A fifth of respondents said they would spend less money on Christmas presents this year compared to 2014.
Around a quarter also said they would shop on discount shopping days such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday, when retailers temporarily slash their prices to entice more people to buy their products.
Furthermore, discount retailers, rather than more expensive designer retailers, were named as the top shopping destinations for Canadian this holiday season.
E-commerce has also seen a drop in popularity as Canadians flock to physical stores to hunt out the best prices and see products in real life before parting with their cash, with over 80% saying they intended to shop in physical stores in the run up to Christmas.
Argentina’s top e-commerce site receives investment
Argentina’s leading e-commerce site Avenida has just received 30 million US dollars’ worth of investment from Naspers and Tiger Global.
Avenida is the most popular e-commerce site in Argentina, handling around 20,000 orders per month and with a predicted 2015 turnover of 30 million US dollars, significantly up from the 8 million US dollars it made in sales last years.
Avenida controls every step of the process for its customers, from browsing to delivery. It currently has 11 distribution centres in the capital Buenos Aires.
It intends to spend the investment on improving its website and also opening up more distribution centres in Buenos Aires and other cities in the country.
The e-commerce market is still relatively immature in Argentina, with just 4% of the population engaging in online shopping. This figure is expected to increase, however, due to rising smartphone penetration, which currently stands at around 70% in the country.
E-commerce in Sweden to hit $6 billion
The Swedish e-commerce market is predicted to hit 50 billion Swedish kronor, equivalent to almost 6 billion US dollars, by the end of the year, according to research by PostNord.
This is an increase of 16% on last year, meaning that e-commerce is now growing faster than traditional shopping, which has only risen by about 5% on last year.
DIY, sport and food are the sectors seeing the fastest e-commerce growth, with sales in these 3 areas all increasing by over 35% compared to last year.
The research also revealed that Swedes are very open to cross-border e-commerce, with 23% of online shoppers admitting to having bought from a foreign online store in the last quarter.
Internet accidentally switched off in Bangladesh
And finally, the Bangladeshi government has been left red-faced after it accidentally cut off the internet to the entire country for over an hour.
It had intended to temporarily block access to specific messaging services such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Viber to prevent unrest after the sentencing of two war criminals in court.
However, something clearly went wrong when the whole country suddenly lost access to the entire internet for over 75 minutes.
How exactly it got it so wrong has not been revealed.
A government spokesperson commented on the blunder, saying: “There was no directive to shut down the internet. We restored the internet as soon as we realised the mistake.”
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Great post.