The 'Online Retail in South Africa 2023' report, released by information technology market research company World Wide Worx in partnership with payment multinational Mastercard, shows that 38% of adult South Africans shopped online during 2022, an increase from the 27% who shopped online in 2020.

“South Africans’ online spending patterns and behaviour continued to evolve at a rapid pace in 2022 despite the country’s ongoing recovery from lockdown restrictions and social distancing," World Wide Worx says.

The proportion of the population that shops online increased by 40%. The initial findings from the study, released at the end of 2022, coincidentally showed close to 40% annual growth in total online retail spend over the past two years, says World Wide Worx CEO and research study principal analyst Arthur Goldstuck.

The age breakdown of online shoppers in South Africa has seen a significant shift from 2020 figures. During the pandemic, online shopping had normalised across age groups and, at the time, an average of 27% to 30% penetration was seen in all age groups up to the age of 64. Only in the 65 and older age group did this drop off to 19%.

“In 2022, two significant shifts occurred. The first was that the pattern of shopping by age returned to a previously observed pattern, namely that online shopping peaked in the 25 to 34 age bracket, and then steadily dropped off with each successive age group.

“The second major shift observed during the past year was in the significant drop in penetration of online shopping among the 65 and older age group. This is the only age group that sees lower penetration than during the height of the pandemic,” Goldstuck notes.

“One conclusion that we can draw from the research is that online shopping is strongly correlated with age, but with the youngest age group constrained by lack of earning ability,” says Mastercard Southern Africa country manager Gabriel Swanepoel.

“A second conclusion is that the oldest age group has a strong reticence towards online shopping, which is backed up by another finding that this bracket is the most likely to still prefer in-store shopping experiences.

“Now, more than ever, it is crucial for retailers to understand their consumers. Understand who they are, where they are, and how our country’s economics affect them. This will assist in understanding how and where to reach the targeted consumers, therefore creating a seamless consumer experience from online to in-store,” he notes.

Further, while most age groups show a relatively high level of agreement with the statement that in-store shopping is preferable to online, between 24% to 30%, this figure increases dramatically to 41% in the over-64 category. No other demographic measure shows such a strong divergence in one segment regarding preference towards in-store experiences, he highlights.

The metrics that showed the highest positive correlation with online shopping were education, rising from 20% of those with less than a matric qualification to 54% of those with tertiary education, and income, rising steadily from 22% of those earning less than R2 500 a month to 62% of those earning more than R50 000.

“The results are a blueprint for online retailers, showing where they will reach their most lucrative customers, and the segments they must target to grow online retail further in South Africa,” says Goldstuck.

Additionally, a revealing aspect of the new data lies in demographic differences between South Africans. The gender breakdown, in particular, shows that the traditional gender divide in online shopping, which was dominated by males in the early years still persists, with 41% of men and 36% of women shopping online, he notes.

A contributing factor to men dominating the online shopping space is owing to them buying electronic goods more frequently, which traditionally is a male shopping domain.

However, the fact that the biggest growth areas in online shopping in recent years have been in groceries and apparel categories, traditionally dominated by female shoppers, suggests there are other factors at work, he points out.