Online shopping thrives with 60% annual growth

Online shopping is booming in the Kingdom where people have become more acquainted with this business and more accepting of the e-commerce concept, with more than 62 million people visiting Souq.com, KSA’s largest online mega store, in the first six months of this year alone.
Electronic goods are among the most popular items being bought on Souq.com by Saudi shoppers, with literally hundreds of mobile phones, laptops and cameras being sold every day.
Speaking to Arab News at an iftar reception held in Riyadh on Wednesday, Ronaldo Mouchawar, chief executive of Souq.com, estimated that online shopping is going to grow by more than 60 percent annually for the next four years as more people are expected to have access to the Internet and become comfortable with the idea of buying online.
Souq.com is by far the biggest e-commerce site in the Arab world. It has a catalog of more than 500,000 unique products from high-quality international and local brands in 25 different categories, including consumer electronics, home appliances, watches, perfumes, toys and baby products. Across the region, it records more than 24 million visits per month on its website, with 10 million unique visitors a month.
“For people to shop online, they need to know that they can get the items that they want, that they can trust the website, and that their goods will be delivered quickly and efficiently. We are happy to say that we have made hundreds of thousands of Saudi shoppers happy in the past couple of years,” said Mouchawar.
“We’re focused on delivering a great experience to our customers: best selection, best prices and fast delivery. That’s what we do, day in and day out.”
To deliver this superior customer experience, Souq.com is investing heavily in technology and infrastructure, including its own payment gateway and fulfillment centers across the region.
A major part of Souq.com’s success is to position itself as a platform that allows SMEs, merchants, brands and distributors to leverage its immense buyer base as a primary channel to offer their products online — essentially playing the role of the traditional souq, or market, which brings sellers into contact with buyers.
“This is a model and approach which is not only proving very successful for us, but also feeds into our commitment to drive job creation and grow entrepreneurship in the Arab world,” said Mouchawar. “The future is incredibly bright, and we own it.”
Some 3.5 million people, representing 14.6 of total population of the Kingdom, are using e-commerce; local media said quoting a report released by the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The report, originally prepared for an e-commerce symposium at the JCCI, said women were the highest users of the e-commerce in the Kingdom in all transactions.
The Kingdom topped the list of the Middle Eastern countries in terms of the growth of e-commerce and, together with the United Arab Emirates, captured nearly 70 percent of the e-commerce market in the region, the report said.
For his part, the head of E-commerce Club at Cairo University, Khalid Mohamed, said Saudi Arabia tends to be one of the highest growth countries globally in the area of e-commerce. The volume of e-commerce in the Kingdom is poised to hit SR50 billion amid impressive growth of the market and enormous turn out to selling and buying goods and products, he said.
He said the volume of e-commerce in the region would reach SR56.25 billion in the next year whereas e-shoppers base will grow to 30 million, which makes it imperative for all parties to payb attention to develop the sector.
He urged all business community, scientists and those who are interested in the development of their businesses, to enter the world of e-commerce, stressing its role to shift users from local to global platform by exporting and marketing of services and products through Web-based and social media networking sites.