QCOSTARICA – While a small percentage in Costa Rica make only purchases, estimated around 12%, it is the country in the region with the most online shoppers.
According to data from Kantar Worldpanel, as reported by La Nacion, the country has a 88% internet coverage, twice the average of Central America, at 47%.
Kantar‘s research on e-commerce (online commerce) revealed that only 31% of Latin American households shopping online, while 69% prefer to buy directly in stores.
Central America remains the most conservative region in shopping online, with 7% in Central America turning to online stores to purchase a product, compared to 93% who preferred buying in traditional stores.
The top countries in Latin America in terms of online shopping are Argentina with 50%, Peru with 38% and Brazil with 34%.
Barriers to e-commerce
While in Costa Rica 80% of consumers prefer to see and touch the product before making the purchase, in the Latin American 76% of respondents said the same, 47% saying they do not know how to use the Internet for shopping and 44% said they distrust enter payment data online.
The Customer Connection 2016 study was based on a mapping of 10,000 households in major cities in Latin America, on trend and consumer habits.
The Tico Times ran the same article but likewise didn’t bother to point out that this so-called “survey” is blantantly false since none of the questions concerned the real barrier to online shopping: High duties.
As I pointed out there, you can take a flight to Ft Lauderdale, buy a computer and fly back to Costa Rica for the same price as buying online and having it shipped to you in Costa Rica.
Plus there’s the onerous trek to Aduana to retrieve your purchase unless you sign up with one of the pricey private mail services. Correos de Costa Rica is making things slightly easier with its BoxCorreo, but those duties are still killing any international online shopping.
So yeah, the same article in two online publications, neither of which bothered to read it, apparently, or else they have no clue as to what’s going on in Costa Rica.
Come on, QCostaRica — yeah, you have a lot of ads which means your income is enough to hire someone to actually read what you publish..