CNNIC: Research on regions and user education levels in online shopping

As smartphones and tablets enter thousands of households, mobile shopping has been used by some people, and more and more people are participating. So what factors influence people to participate in these new things, which user markets should mobile shopping service providers strive to win, and how to compete with PC shopping service providers?

CNNIC analyst Li Changjiang takes you into the regional and educational research of online shopping. The following are the results of a segmented survey of netizens who shop online through PCs and mobile devices.

Figure 1 Proportion of mobile shopping among urban, suburban and rural netizens

The survey shows that among urban, suburban and rural netizens, the proportion of netizens who have engaged in mobile shopping has gradually decreased, which shows that the popularity of mobile shopping is still positively correlated with the level of economic development.

It is necessary to point out that urban netizens have a higher rate of computer ownership, which will divert a part of the mobile shopping ratio. Mobile phones have become an important device for rural netizens to access the Internet. However, it is not necessarily the case that the proportion of rural netizens who have engaged in mobile shopping is higher than that of urban netizens. This is because:

First, in addition to mobile phones, mobile shopping devices here also include tablets, the latter of which are not popular in rural areas.

Second, in addition to equipment, the constraints on mobile shopping also include various supporting measures such as logistics and payment. These supporting measures are relatively better in economically developed regions.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2: The proportion of mobile shopping and PC shopping among netizens at different educational levels

The survey shows:

(1) Among netizens with a junior high school education or below, the proportion of those who have engaged in mobile shopping is significantly lower than that among netizens with a high school education or above.

(2) Among netizens with “primary school education or below”, the proportion of netizens who have engaged in PC shopping is significantly lower than that among netizens with “junior high school education or above”.

(3) Regardless of the educational level of netizens, the proportion of mobile shopping is lower than that of PC shopping.

The survey shows that:

(1) Both mobile shopping and PC shopping require certain knowledge and technical skills, and are not yet completely foolproof.

(2) The threshold for mobile shopping is a high school education, which is higher than the junior high school education threshold for PC shopping. This is also an important factor that the proportion of mobile shopping is lower than that of PC shopping.

In the future, mobile shopping and PC shopping service providers need to continuously improve the user experience and attract netizens with lower knowledge levels from aspects such as shopping interface, shopping process, and publicity. Mobile shopping service providers must quickly lower the threshold to at least a junior high school education, after all, the nine-year compulsory education that has been implemented for many years only reaches a junior high school education. In addition, in order to compete with PC shopping service providers for the user market, they also need to level or lower the technical threshold of both.