E-commerce

Internet access

With a population of 55.9 million people, South Africa is experiencing a boom in internet access, totaling roughly 28.5 million online users in 2017. However, the penetration rate of 50% is still low when compared to other developed countries. Although there are about 29 million smartphones in use in South Africa, only 21 million devices access the internet. The number of users connecting only through mobile is 7 million. Almost two-third of South African internet users access the internet daily, while only 4% do it less than once per month. Google is the most popular web search engine in the country, with a market share of 93.6%, followed by Bing and Yahoo, at 4.7% and 1.4% respectively.

E-commerce market

The e-commerce market is constantly growing in South Africa: e-commerce revenue across all product categories was estimated at US$ 2.69 billion in 2017, at around 1% of total retail sales. Among the major players in the country’s market are South Africa’s biggest online fashion store Zando; Takealot (a platform that offers a wide range of products, including home entertainment, kitchen appliances, toys, books, personal care goods, etc.); the online auction site and marketplace Bid or Buy; Next and Spree in the fashion industry; Loot for electronics. Online shoppers are increasingly opting to make purchases on their mobile devices, with a preference for apps over mobile websites. Cross-border online spending is common: according to a research by Ipsos, an estimated 1.4 million South Africans online shoppers purchased from foreign websites, the main drivers encouraging them to buy cross-border being free shipping, availability of local currency for payment and secure ways to pay, together with the possibility to buy products that are not available in South Africa. The main countries of origin for online-purchased products were the U.S., China and the U.K.

Social media

In South Africa, around 32% of the population makes use of social media platforms. Of these, 13 million users do so purely from mobile, with a 24% penetration rate. The increase between 2016 and 2017 has been notable, with an additional 2 million (15%) new active social media users, and 3 million (30%) new active social users on mobile. With almost 16 million users, Facebook is the most utilised social media platform, followed by YouTube (8.7 million) and Twitter (8 million). Instagram sees adoption from just over 3.8 million users, while the professional social networking platform LinkedIn has 6.1 million users. Looking at Facebook, the 18-24 and 25-34 age groups are by far the largest groups of users, with a similar trend for other social networks.