Women are known to love shopping, but a new survey on Chinese shoppers said that when it comes to online shopping, it is men who love to splurge.
The results debunked belief that China’s e-commerce sector is mainly driven by female consumers who buy clothes and cosmetics online. When they shop online, women focus on the purchase of daily necessities, according to the finding of Ant Financial Services, reported The South China Morning Post.
Not only are Chinese male online shoppers more hedonistic, their level of online spending is higher than women shoppers. The data is based on transactions handled by Alipay, the online payment giant run by Ant Financial which conducted the study in partnership with the China Academy of New Supply Side Economics. Alipay handles 58 percent of all online transactions in China, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Alipay, which has 450 million users, nevertheless, confirmed that when it comes to volume, more goods and services are bought on the internet by female shoppers based on their index score of 527 versus 524 for men.
But most of the purchases by women consumers were household items, while male buyers bought personal care products and leisure services.
Overall, online spending in the mainland kept on growing, hitting 3.88 trillion yuan in 2015, a 33.3 percent hike compared to 2014 levels.
For 2016, the level is expected to further climb following Alipay’s tie-up with Samsung which allows owners of phones made by the South Korean giant to use their smartphones to transact in and out of China, reported Thedrum.