About 6.7 million Romanians now have experience with shopping online, while 1.4 million inhabitants have used a mobile device to buy something online, according to estimates expressed in the aftermath of the GPeC event, a notable ecommerce event in teh local market, ecommercenews.eu reports.
It says that some companies even consider the value to be closer to EUR 1.5 billion. Romania has about 19.8 million inhabitants, out of which 13 million are aged 16 to 55 years old. The country has 11 million internet users and of these people, 6.7 million have shopped online at least once in their life.
Although most Romanians prefer to shop online using their pc or laptop, the use of mobile devices grew dramatically in 2015: 1.4 million Romanian online shoppers used a mobile device to complete a purchase, while 850.000 used a mobile shopping app to order something online. “If we look at the last months of 2015, over 50% of the key online shops traffic has been generated by mobile devices”, GPeC explains, the source cites.
In Romania, an online shopper makes an average of 8.2 purchases per year, up to 8.1 in 2014. When they order something, Romanian consumers prefer to pay with cash on delivery, with 90% of online shopping being paid this way.
Online card payments account for only 6 or 7%, while 3 to 4% is done through other payment methods, such as online banking and micropayments via SMS. And, based on data from Visa, it appears that Romanian people spend more money in foreign online shops (average order value of EUR 58) than at local ecommerce websites (EUR 40).
GPeC estimates there are about 5,000 online shops active in Romania, a number that has remained constant in 2015. There may be over 20,000 websites with a .ro domain that have the ‘Add to cart’ functionality, but only 5,000 of these websites generate significant traffic and orders, the organisation says. It estimates that out of these online shops, approximately 200 are big and medium businesses, exceeding EUR 1 million in annual turnover.
Based on online purchases by Romanian consumers, the most popular product category is consumer electronics. This is followed by fashion & beauty, home & deco and kids & toys. And just as in other countries, for Romanians the price is no longer the most important factor when they choose to shop online. The main services they are looking for online are free delivery, discounts and promotional campaigns, free returns and fast delivery.
Every day we send out a free e-mail with the most important headlines of the last 24 hours.
Subscribe now