In navigating e-commerce, new online sellers need help too
WITH mall shopping now a distant memory for many, how has the process of enticing customers to buy your wares changed in the ecommerce age?
“You have to really be able to know how people are using the different digital channels and being relevant there,” Roshan Ramesh Nandwani, chief strategy officer of advertising agency BBDO Guerrero, told BusinessWorld.
And while literally billions of pesos are riding on understanding consumer behavior when much of their spending has shifted online, perhaps the least understood aspect of this equation is how small businesses that are new to online selling can hit the ground running under pressure from an unprecedented economic crisis.
According to the 2020 e-Conomy SEA (Southeast Asia) report issued by Google, Temasek and Bain & Co., at least 37% of the Philippines’ digital service consumers were new to online services when the pandemic hit. The Philippine total is just above the 36% average for Southeast Asia. The e-Conomy report also found that 95% of the new digital consumers expected to continue using online channels post-pandemic. How might this new reality change the landscape for retail?
“There is a consumer behavior reset that is driving consumption patterns,” NielsenIQ Philippines, Vietnam, and Myanmar Managing Director John Patrick Cua told BusinessWorld.
One of the new consumption patterns that emerged during the pandemic is what NielsenIQ calls the “homebody reset” — a shift in spending favoring purchases made at home, rather than “discretionary out-of-home expenses.”
In response to these shifts, more companies, brands, and retailers have started to look for ways to get their products out on digital shopping platforms
“Over 300,000 sellers onboarded with Lazada Philippines since the start of 2021, and the number is growing steadily,” Lazada Philippines Chief Operating Officer Carlos Otermin Barrera told BusinessWorld, adding that the response of consumers has been “quite encouraging.”
But what sells?