One in three Spaniards made a purchase online

Eight in ten Spanish inhabitants rate the general economic situation in Spain as bad or very bad. And 23 percent thinks that within a year the situation will be even worse than it is now. And it seems the situation isn’t any better online. In the past twelve months, only 36.5 percent made a purchase on the internet.

This could be concluded from a new barometer study [pdf] from Centro de Investigación Sociológicas (CIS), which held interviews with 2471 households in Spain from 1 to 11 May, 2014. The most popular products that were bought online by the Spaniards surveyed travel tickets (47%), holiday reservations (36%), concerts and theater tickets (34%), clothing (38%) and sporting goods (19%).

Comfort and price important drivers for ecommerce spending
The main reasons why Spanish consumers have purchased goods or services over the internet instead of getting it a physical store are: comfort (85%), prices, promotions or offers (78%), saving time (75%) and easy to compare between offers and product information (62%).

CIS also asked why people haven’t bought anything online in the past twelve months. And 44% said they haven’t shopped online because they don’t have or they don’t use the internet. One in ten consumers told CIS they hadn’t had no need to do so, and 21% prefers to see things before buying them. Also 21% said they don’t trust the internet in general, so shopping online isn’t something they want to do.

Of those who think that internet shopping may reduce purchases in physical stores, 70% thinks that travel tickets are the most affected products. Also holiday reservations, tickets, clothing, media and consumer electronics are amongst the product categories that will probably be most affected by shopping online.

Complaining customers
Almost two in ten Spanish consumers (18.4%) have once filed a complaint about a product or service they’ve bought. A similar percentage (17.2%) even complained more than once. But the lion’s share of consumers (61.7%) never filed a complaint. And of those who did complain about a product or service, 53% was happy with the outcome.