Balochistan Point Voice of Nation
The world observed an increasing trend of online shopping in the past few years. Just like rest of the world, Pakistan showed the same results, too. In fact, Pakistanis prefer buying via the Internet more than other nations, and they have obvious reasons to do that. The rising trend of online shopping is growing with the passage of time. The e-commerce business is likely to hit the market size by $1 billion by the year 2020. All the cities showed the similar increasing trend, but the statistical results showed that Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad are on the top of the list. In the year 2017, the online shopping trend increased up to 12% in Karachi alone.
Major Reasons Behind Increasing Online Shopping Trend in Pakistan
The amplification of online shopping in Pakistan is mainly because of the rise in B2C (business-to-consumer) businesses. There was a time when Pakistanis used to wonder how Amazon shopping feels like because there were no such facilities in the country. However, the dream came true when several Pakistani online stores such as Daraz.pk, Yayvo and GetNow.pk entered into the market. There were only a few people who were familiar with the concept of online shopping in Pakistan before the launch of these stores. These are several amazon-structured online marketplaces in the country that have altered people’s lifestyles in just a few years.
On the other hand, there are approximately 23 million Internet users in the country and most of them have their personal 3G/4G mobile access. What is more, there are around 150 million cellular subscribers from Karachi to KPK. Due to an easy access to the Internet and mobile phones, the e-commerce business in Pakistan is now accelerating at an ever rapid pace. According to a research, the current annual income of e-commerce businesses in the country is between $25 and $30 million. This figure is expected to raise up to $1 billion by the year 2020.
Amazing Facilities and Offers by the Online Marketplaces
Pakistanis are sales and price conscious and they mostly use social media websites to search their products and brands. They still don’t prefer Google for searching and use Facebook and Instagram the most. This creates a challenging situation for businesses to compete and retain in the market. However, this challenge results in forcing them to offer appealing discounts and sales packages to customers. This is one of the main reasons why people in Pakistan are more inclined towards online shopping than other countries. Not only do they get amazingly lowered prices at different marketplaces, but they save their transportation cost as some stores do not charge delivery fees.
The Enormity of E-Commerce Business in Pakistan
The online shopping isn’t confined to buying regular items through the web. The e-commerce business has enlarged up to a great extent and some sensitive transactions are made online. For instance, zameen.com is an online marketplace that deals with property-related matters. People are now using services like Foodpanda to order food online from different areas of the city. In short, the Internet has penetrated into our lives and everything is at our fingertips now. As a result, we as consumers are benefitting and the e-commerce business is thriving.
Published in The Balochistan Point on February 9, 2018
