Hey big spenders: Chinese shoppers top e-commerce list

China heads the list of countries with the biggest online spending habits as a proportion of their income, new research by Website Builder Expert reveals.

Its study compares data from the E-commerce Foundation and the Davos 2017 Global Wage Calculator across 19 of the largest countries around the world. Chinese shoppers splurge nearly a fifth of their salaries on e-commerce, whilst Brits boast the largest total amount online at over $4,000 each per year. The US ranked in seventh place overall, spending a much smaller proportion of their salary shopping online (7.6%). Mexico was in 2nd place with residents spending over 17% of their income online, splashing out over $800 every year. At present only half of Mexico’s population uses the internet but its economy is growing at an impressive rate, meaning that online retail sales are likely to skyrocket in the immediate future.

South Africa is bottom of the pile. Though India is only one place above it in terms of e-commerce spend per capita, the percentage of salary spent online is surprisingly relatively high at more than 10.6%, the fifth highest in the study. Josh Frisby, who headed up the research for Website Builder Expert, comments: “There is no doubt that the convenience of shopping online is being realised across the world. Our research highlights the huge opportunity for businesses thinking about expanding their online presence overseas, especially in some countries in South America and Asia where only half of the population have access to the internet.”