Exciting Commerce has always enjoyed looking beyond our borders. We’ve reported very early on the exciting French e-commerce market which has in recent times via Vente-Privée & Co. exerted significant influence on international e-commerce developments.

We could trust the Turkish market to be similar, since the population there is extremely young and open-minded. We are therefore very happy get an insider look into the Turkish online market from Sina Afra, Managing Director from eBay Turkey / GittiGidiyor.

In the first part of his two-part guest blog post he described the rapid progression occuring now in Turkey. In part two today, he goes into Turkish online behaviour and points out where there is still room to grow in the Turkish e-commerce world.

The online behaviour of the Turkish people

The significant difference in behaviour between Turkish e-commerce users as compared to American or German users lie in three areas:

• Firstly, the age demographic of the Turkish internet user. Most of them are under 30 years old and have no embedded habits. So start-ups who offer advantages in product selection, price or shipping conditions can very quickly build up a head start over established players in the market.
• Secondly, the high credit card penetration rate, which is even higher than in Germany. With this mechanism, online purchases are directly “settled” and the processes run very quickly. At eBay Turkey the time lag from the last offer for an article until the buyer receives the article is only 3 days. And that is even considering an escrow system, over which all eBay Turkey transactions go through.
• Thirdly is the openness for online business, which is at a completely different level as in the established markets. Although trust is always an important topic, the candidness of the mostly young internet and e-commerce population leads them to act differently and as well often very quickly. One could categorically say that Turkey is a high-speed market which is best comparable to Korea.

There is in e-commerce some few Turkish further developments from known models. An often used example is the Pazartesi Sendromu (“Monday Syndrome”), a kind of woot.com copy which has built up its own identity via small but intelligent add-ons and adaptations. 

Opportunities and future outlook in the Turkish e-commerce market

In the future we are going to see primarily adaptations from e-commerce models which are also well known in the big countries. And due to the white spots in the Turkish internet landscape, there are e-commerce segments with enormous potential.

Examples for such white areas are online pharmacies, online payments (such as Paypal), online services (eg. tradesman search), but also in niches of established segments. One example is the career and employment industry. In that segment there are established enterprises, but no company has yet to deal with the topic of temp work.

It looks similar in the online advertising field – the majority of market participants are classical marketers. New technologies such as Behavioural Targeting aren’t there yet, but will certainly make an entrance soon into the Turkish market.

Turkey resembles the German e-commerce market from 2005 – but with a big difference. The movement forward and the catching up to other countries is taking place with breathtaking speed and progress.

More insights to the Turkish emerging market can be found in the first part of this guest blog as well as in the link tips.

We would be pleased to entertain further guest blogs on this topic. Tips per email are welcome.

Related posts:

• The Turkish E-commerce Market (1) – Guest Post
• Emerging Markets: The Best Turkish Links for the Non-Turkish
• Emerging Markets: Turkey Firing On All Cylinders
• Monday Syndrome Spurs on Live Shopping in Turkey

Originally posted in German by Sina Afra and Jochen Krisch, adapted for excitingcommerce.com by Jason Soo.