No substitute for over-the-counter trade

A survey by PwC, an auditing and consulting company, which involved 7 000 online shoppers in seven countries, reveals that, although the internet is changing the significance of over-the-counter trade, it won’t consequently make it redundant. Online customers go shopping on the internet 8.4 times a month in China, 5.2 times in America, 4.3 times in England and three times in Germany. The detailed analysis shows that, even in China, the static “offline” trade is not necessarily going to be left behind because of the internet. One in three online customers will happily make use of a shop to exchange or return goods they have received, one in four actually prefers to collect his goods personally from a store, despite having ordered them online. “Shops will still be important, depending on the product category, though in a much expanded role: perhaps as a showroom or as a collection point for goods ordered on the internet,” explains Gerd Bovensiepen, director of PwC’s competence centre retail & consumer.