The rate of internet penetration by the Pakistani community has remarkably exceeded in comparison to the neighboring countries like India and China in recent years. According to a survey conducted in 2009, India was the only country from third-world region with 3G services. It was then just the matter of time that India’s internet penetration rate sky-rocketed. Same is the case with Sri Lanka, the hockey-stick of the same pattern as of India worked.
According to a recent survey, it has been estimated that the online community of Pakistan will be populated to 55+ million users by the end of 2019. The core reason behind the encouraging growth of online consumers is none other than the same pattern as of India and Sri Lanka. In addition to it, the advancement to 4G has opened new corridors of access.
Ease of Access with Online Payment:
People are fond of purchasing online stuff when they are offered cash on delivery (COD) option. Around 95% of the users take it as a leap of faith and feel quite satisfied to pay the cash after the stuff is delivered. However, the trending banking sector has also initiated different means of online payment as well.
With growing reputable online brands, online consumers have started to share their credit card information for online purchasing as well. This has brought a major breakthrough in the history of IT industry in Pakistan.
Maturing Parcel Delivery & Logistics Infrastructure:
It was the same phenomenon that the entrepreneurs had to face in Silicon Valley in early 90s. With no basic infrastructure of delivering the stuff to consumer’s doorstep, IT industry has suffered a lot in its initial phases in Pakistan as well. It was getting quite hard for the online consumers to put their trust with money to cloud shops prior to the fact that the delivery can be a major issue.
Seeing no positive change in the attitude of online consumers towards e-commerce, the then-brands for the first time in history of Pakistan utilized the medium of main-stream media. People seeing advertisements on reputable TV channels thought to give it a chance and it worked.
Educating Consumers:
Keeping in mind the growing trend of e-commerce stores, government of Pakistan has recently passed a bill ensuring that all the universities are bound to teach importance of e-commerce to youth.
Barriers:
Apart from all the achievements, there are still dozens of barriers that e-commerce industry of Pakistan has to cope with:
• Discouraging policies of Government.
• Low literacy rate.
• Misconception regarding e-commerce industry of Pakistan.
Conclusion:
It is no wrong to say that Pakistan’s IT industry has joined the party quite late. Even then the booming response from citizens has raised eye-brows of leading IT gurus in recent years. Within no matter of time, the brands like iShopping.pk, Kaymu.pk, and daraz.pk have developed an appealing worth to online consumers.
All these efforts put by the major e-commerce brands have ultimately encouraged the online users to purchase stuff. While offering number of facilities, these brands became major economic stabilizer of Pakistan. All in all, it was only the matter of educating online consumers of Pakistan.