April 17, 2020 13:03
Elderly Koreans increasingly reply on their children or other helpers to navigate the bewildering world of the Internet to shop for them in this time of coronavirus.
Many senior citizens are reluctant to visit supermarkets for fears of infection but are often unfamiliar with online shopping.
ebay Korea surveyed 2,564 customers in their 20s to 40s on its e-commerce site Auction between March 28 and April 4 and found that 89 percent of respondents had done online shopping for their parents.
Some 35 percent said they did so because their parents did not know how, while others said they were shopping online anyway and included their parents' shopping list.
Nearly all said they will continue shopping for their parents online. Only about one-third of the purchases were food and daily necessities.
An ebay Korea staffer said, "We can see that proxy shopping for senior citizens is rising because customers in their 20s to 40s are suddenly buying things like diabetes test kits and hearing aids."
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