Survey Report: Online Economic Activity in Taiwan - February 2021

While Internet services prevail, COVID-19 has also accelerated the growth of Taiwanese’s online dependence. Take online shopping for instance, the outbreak has led to higher frequency of online shopping and larger purchase amount.

Key findings

• After COVID-19 broke out, online shopping has grown by more than 40% while physical shopping has been reduced by 35%. The same trend is also found in people's spending behavior.
  
  
• When we examine the results by age, nearly half of people under 30 have done cross border shopping in the past 6 months. Although people in their 40s and 50s do not have a high demand for cross border shopping like the youth do.
  
  
• Over 70% of people above 30 are using mobile payments. As to people between 18-29, not only do they have the lowest usage rate, they also use it differently from the majority, who have credit cards linked to their accounts.
  
  

Recommendations

• Since it's rather easy to compare prices online, customer loyalty can be lowered easily. Creating repeat customers with a comprehensive and well designed membership system is key for e-commerce platforms.
  
  
• Businesses can take the opportunity and plan themed shopping events for exclusive products so as to attract people's would have been travel budget.
  
  
• It would be wise for service providers to make more payment channels available, promote successful cases of security protection and therefore win the trust of consumers.
  
  

Download the report here!