Australians still reluctant to shop online
It's probably true that the whole "look and feel" thing is a swaying factor, but that's not what's holding Australia back on the whole, say Rosenberg and Britton. The real inhibitor to widespread consumer take-up of online shopping, they say, is the same one that's been haunting the local etail industry all along: fear. Fear of security, fear of poor fulfillment. One is reasonable, the other isn't, both experts say. They say the truth about Internet security is that while there are hackers out there who can get what they want - certainly your credit card details, and more - they are fewer, and a whole lot smarter, than the commonplace thieves who take off with credit card details submitted far away from the Web every day.
Indeed, government agency the National Office for the Internet Economy (NOIE) agrees consumer fears of credit card fraud over the Net are over the top. NOIE cites industry research figures that show more than half the nation's population are hesitant to pay for anything online due to security fears. Meanwhile, the agency says, less than two percent of transactions conducted over the Web have ever resulted in any kind of security breach. Relative to the risks consumers face every day in the offline world, security is more of a deterrent to online shopping than it really ought to be.
"It's a mindset we have to change," says Rosenberg, offering up the scandal-hungry local media as one reason for such an inflamed collective fear of Web security. Fear of poor fulfillment? Well, the experts say, this is absolutely reasonable. Eighty percent may sound impressive for a first-year uni student, but this is the real world. Full marks or bust. The smart etailers, and the ones with enough moolah, have taken the right steps to get as close as possible to the full hundred.
As for the rest, and those that make the easy mistake of doing business with them this Christmas. Well, there's always 2001.
