A

n avid online shopper, Miranti, prefers buying clothes or shoes rather than electronics or any other products online.

Miranti said that buying apparel online was fun because online stores usually offered very limited stock of each item they sold.

'€œI can spend between Rp 300,000 [US$26.51] and Rp 400,000 on fashion items, something that I can'€™t do with electronics, which are relatively expensive,'€ she said.

Miranti is just one shopper who considers an online shop the best place to buy clothes.

A recent study on online shoppers conducted by Google Indonesia reveals that Indonesian male and female online shoppers are more interested in apparel than any other items.

Google Indonesia, in cooperation with market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS), conducted the study for the first time in 12 major cities in Bali, Java, Kalimantan, Maluku, Sulawesi and Sumatra.

Google polled 1,300 males and females aged 18 to 50 who have access to the Internet.

The respondents were categorized into four types: those who have shopped online in the last 30 days, those who have shopped online in the last six months, those who have never shopped online but have Internet access and those who have sold online.

The study, which was released on Monday, revealed that fashion items accounted for 51 percent of total products bought online in the last 30 days, followed by cell phones and electronics with 19 percent and 14 percent, respectively.

The country head of Google Indonesia, Rudy Ramawy, said the study also found that 50 percent of those who had never shopped online would shop online within 12 months, with 40 percent of them buying clothes.

Kusumo Martanto, the CEO of online store blibli.com, said fashion had become the fastest-growing items in his store.

'€œWhen we opened our online store in 2011, fashion only accounted for 15 percent of our total sales. Now it accounts for around 35 percent,'€ he said.

He said his firm added no fewer than 1,000 new fashion items per week to keep up with surging demand.

'€œEspecially with the World Cup just around the corner, I think there will be much higher demand for sport or soccer wear,'€ Kusumo said.

Kusumo said that overall, his business had grown 30 times from when it was first was established.

'€œNow, we target to record 50 percent annual growth as I believe that many more people in the country will go online,'€ he said.

Indonesia'€™s Internet penetration reached 31 percent last year, with cell-phone users accounting for more than two-thirds of the population.

The country'€™s e-commerce market is expected to grow to $25 billion in 2016 from only $8 billion last year, according to Indonesian e-commerce provider Vela Asia.

Rudy said, however, that online stores had to guarantee that their customers could make secure transactions and have a good '€œshopping experience'€ if they wanted their businesses to keep growing.

According to the Google study, 40 percent of non-online shoppers were reluctant to shop online because they were worried about the online payment system and that they could not personally touch the products they wanted to buy. (koi)