Voice of Customer: Direct-from-China Shopping App — Wish

Do you shop online? Of course you do. Even if you’re not an avid online shopper, I bet you’ve bought a thing or two on Amazon. Online shopping is easy, fast and you can do it virtually anywhere. We’ve already introduced an online only retailer, Zulily, you can see our analysis here. Now we’re going to show you a similar shopping app, Wish. Wish was co-founded by Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang in 2011, after Zhang learned he could integrate his coding skills with his Chinese background.

Wish is a shopping app that provides a platform for Chinese vendors to sell their products. You may have guessed it, Wish is a direct-from-China shopping app, so when you purchase something on Wish, the vendor ships your order directly from China. They are able to offer their products at lower prices because they don’t have to go through a distributor. Wish claims that it’s a budget shopper’s dream come true, since we all know that the price for Chinese merchandise can be shockingly low. Wish currently offers 40 million items from more than 100,000 merchants, and has nearly 100 million registered user/buyer accounts. Wish is climbing up on the chart in Apple App Store and is ranked 51 in “free to download” category in App Store. People are using this app, making purchases on this app, but what do people actually think about Wish? Let’s examine their customer ratings and see how they can become more successful.

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The Good

We can first see that the app has a very positive feedback from users, and has more 5 star ratings than other ratings. So why are people raving about Wish? This is easy to find out if we look at the Buzzword section.

Why people love Wish.

• Gift card promotion. Wish offers a $10 gift card for every new user when they sign up and this $10 bonus can be used toward any purchase on Wish. This promotion has successfully attracted many people to download this app to give it a try.
• The app is simple and easy to navigate. It’s extremely easy to search for products you want which may make online-shopping less intimidating for some shoppers that are not so tech-savvy.
• They offer a wide variety of products. Some people think this is the “Chinese Amazon”, because Wish sells a wide range of items, from garden hoses to tablets to prom dresses. Modern customers love 1-stop shopping and Wish definitely fits the the bill when it comes to time saving.
• Referral bonus. Like many companies, Wish offers their customers a referral bonus when they recommend this app to others and successfully get them to sign up.

The Not So Good

While most users enjoy Wish, they are not perfect. Let’s take a look at some not-so-good comments from its customers, and understand why they’re unsure about Wish.

• Customer service needs to be improved. A lot of people swear by Apple products or Amazon because of their impeccable customer service. Well, Wish is a young company, so it’s probably not entirely fair to compare it to Apple and Amazon, but we all know how crucial good customer service is. No one likes to wait 2 hours on the phone to speak to a representative or wait a week to get an email reply. Most people complain about how slow Wish’s customer service responds to questions or requests.
• Some people are weary of the security of the site. They’re worried about their credit card information and some have had issues with being overcharged.

The Ugly

Now we know Wish is not perfect, few things are. But are there any deal breakers?

• You get what you pay for. Originally some people think they’re getting great bargains from Wish, only to find out that the quality does not live up to their expectation. Low prices don’t seem as tempting when the quality of products is poor. In the end, price is only one of the factors that drives business, you may need more than that to keep your customers satisfied.
• A lot of unhappy buyers are requesting refunds, which presents to us two major problems. First, Wish processes refunds slowly. Some customers claim they haven’t received their refunds after 2 weeks, this is somewhat unreasonable when the average time for processing refunds is one week. Second, we need to know the reason for refund requests. The data shows that it’s because the shipping takes a lot longer than most people expected. Wish does tell you that it generally takes about 3 weeks for you to get your order (the vendors are located in China). However, many times Wish doesn’t make the delivery deadline, which upsets numerous buyers. Imagine if you buy yourself a beautiful summer dress, only to get it in late fall.

Temporal Trends can further explain why people felt so annoyed with Wish missing their deadlines. If you look at the trends, you will see the business peaked during 11/27/2015. It’s not hard to guess why, it’s a month before Christmas, so people are purchasing presents for their loved ones. What if they don’t receive their orders before the holidays? Now that’s going to leave a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.

The Future

Wish has its strong points to attract customers. Competitive price, wide variety and referral system, to name a few. However, it takes more than that to be a reliable online marketplace that customers want to revisit. It is no doubt a challenge to maintain products’ quality and also their customer service’s reliability. On top of these two problems, they also need to solve their shipping issues, and figure out how to fulfill their shipping promises. Wish has a bright future ahead of it, if it can overcome the obstacles along the way.

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