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What South Africans buy on the Internet
The latest Effective Measure statistics reveal the most popular products bought online in SA.
Effective Measure recently released its November 2015 statistics, which show that the most popular products purchased online are tickets, books, hotel reservations, and music/movies.
Effective Measure is the official traffic measurement partner of the IAB South Africa, and provides accurate traffic and demographics statistics for South Africa’s top websites.
The group’s recent Internet demographics statistics are based on 280,400 online surveys completed by local Internet users.
The stats reveal that 46% of South African Internet users purchased tickets for shows or sport events online.
45% of local Internet users purchased books online, while the same percentage bought travel tickets for flights, buses, and trains.
26% of South Africa’s Internet population said they do not purchase anything online.
| Items Purchased via Internet | |
| Tickets for shows or sport events | 45.71% |
| Books | 45.42% |
| Travel Tickets: Bus, Train, Flights, Boat | 45.29% |
| Hotel Reservations | 37.98% |
| DVDs, Videos, Music (CD, K7, MP3’s) | 34.29% |
| None of the above | 25.53% |
| Holiday package | 22.89% |
| Software | 22.54% |
| Flowers / Gifts | 19.16% |
| Toys and games | 14.53% |
| Clothes and accessories | 13.91% |
| Health and Beauty Products | 12.96% |
| Food | 10.22% |
| Computers | 10.07% |
| Domain names, hosting services | 9.01% |
| Cars, Motorbikes, Bicycles | 7.79% |
| Mass market electronics: TV, Radios, Mobile, HiFi | 7.65% |
| PC or Console Video games | 7.34% |
| Ringtones, games or Icons for Mobile phones | 7.03% |
| Sport shoes, Sport clothes | 5.97% |
| Real Estate / Property | 4.77% |
| Alcoholic beverages | 4.01% |
| Art objects | 2.60% |
| Internet usage | |
| 89.45% | |
| Banking | 68.23% |
| Research / Obtaining information | 63.79% |
| Reading news / magazine articles online | 59.75% |
| Social Networking | 51.02% |
| Shopping | 33.72% |
| Job Search | 28.34% |
| Directory Services | 25.98% |
| Music downloads | 24.49% |
| Instant Messaging | 20.26% |
| Chat | 19.57% |
| Listen to the radio online | 15.15% |
| Watch TV and Videos online | 14.70% |
| Podcast / Video downloads | 12.28% |
| Blogging | 9.27% |
| Share Trading | 7.44% |
| Dating | 2.79% |
| Gambling | 1.42% |
| None of the above | 0.87% |
