Men are Catching on to Online Shopping
For the few years that it’s been around, online shopping has been considered the province of largely female bargain hunters but recently more guys have discovered the joys of buying with just a click.
PayPal claims that online shoppers are currently pretty evenly distributed by sex, with 49% being male and 51% female. According to Vanessa Tay, public relations spokesperson for Asian mobile shopping app Carousell, the number of guys discovering online shopping has jumped recently. “Up until 18 months ago, 70 per cent of our users in Singapore were female and only 30 per cent male, but the split is now 50-50.”
Not surprisingly, male shoppers love tech items but are also increasingly buying clothing, accessories and watches. Since most men are averse to hitting the malls, the number of guys shopping online is likely to grow in the future as they discover the ease of avoiding all those traffic and parking hassles.
Luxury Goods Sales Expected to Fall in China
The current political climate in some countries including China has cast a pall over the luxury industry as some customers are now reluctant to flaunt their conspicuous consumption. Writer John Gapper analyzed the drop in the sales of luxury goods in China in an article recently published in the Financial Times.
“[It] is a result of the crackdown on Communist party corruption, which has hit the local habit of giving expensive gifts to well-connected officials,” stated Gapper. “Bain and Co. expects that luxury goods sales will fall in China in 2015 after years of being the biggest growth market.”
“Officials there no longer want to be seen wearing expensive watches or driving in flashy cars…,” he added. “Perhaps discretion will be in more demand: minimalist jewellery instead of bling; Audis instead of Ferraris (although Ferrari plans an initial public offering); silver watches rather than gold chronometers. A yacht is hard to disguise, but it can be sailed out of sight of public beaches.”
While it’s not hard to imagine a billionaire hiding his yacht away on a secluded private island, it seems doubtful that the wealthy will be concealing their Rolex or Omega timepieces just because they might arouse envy among the masses.
