Men spend more than women on foreign websites

It always seems as though women are more addicted to shopping than men as they spend countless hours at the mall and are glued to online shopping websites on their smartphones.

But it turns out that Korean men spend more than women when it comes to direct overseas purchases.

According to a study by Shinhan, Samsung, Hyundai and KB credit card companies last year, men bought 370.1 billion won ($283.6 million) worth of goods from overseas websites. That is 53.4 percent of the 692.8 billion won spent on direct purchases from overseas websites last year. Women bought a total of 322.6 billion won.

Even when compared to 2011, the value of transactions by men grew 216.8 percent, compared to 209.9 percent for women.

While Korean women were busy buying fashion items, including clothes, hand bags and shoes, men were purchasing electronics and IT products.

When digging deeper into the data, women in their 30s were actually the leading force behind overseas direct purchases, accounting for 24.2 percent. Men in their 30s trailed closely at 23.3 percent.

Men in their 40s were the more frequent overseas direct purchasers than women of the same age group. While women in their 40s accounted for only 9.2 percent of buyers, men of the same age group represented 15 percent.

Studies also showed that while consumers in their 30s still dominated the group of people purchasing goods via overseas online shopping malls and websites like Amazon, it also showed that those in their 20s are now more actively participating in such purchases.

People in their 30s accounted for 47.6 percent of overseas direct purchases in 2014, compared to 44.1 percent in 2011.

During the same period, buyers in their 40s fell from 27.7 percent to 24.3 percent. But those in their 20s doubled from 5.5 percent in 2011 to 11.5 percent last year.

In recent years, overseas direct purchases have grown nearly 50 percent annually and are edging close to 700 billion won.

But when compared to three years ago, the average price per purchase shrank from 104,000 won in 2011 to 90,000 won.

BY LEE HO-JEONG [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]